GLENN  NEGLEY 


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A  TRAVELER 
FROM    ALTRURIA 


Unmanrr 


BY 
W.     D.     H  OWE  L  L  S 

AUTHOR   OF 

'THE  COAST  OF   BOHEMIA"   "THE  QUALITY  OF   MERCY' 

"A  HAZARD  OF  NEW   FORTUNES"   ETC. 


HARPER    &    BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 

NEW  YORK  AND   LONDON 

1908 


Copyright,  1894,  by  William  Dean  Howklls. 
All  rights  reserved. 


A  TRAVELER   FROM   ALTRURIA 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 


I  confess  that  with  all  my  curiosity  to  meet  an 
Altrurian,  I  was  in  no  hospitable  mood  toward  the 
traveler  when  he  finally  presented  himself,  pursuant 
to  the  letter  of  advice  sent  me  by  the  friend  who  in- 
troduced him.  It  would  be  easy  enough  to  take  care 
of  him  in  the  hotel ;  I  had  merely  to  engage  a  room 
for  him,  and  have  the  clerk  tell  him  his  money  was 
not  good  if  he  tried  to  pay  for  anything.  But  I  had 
swung  fairly  into  my  story ;  its  people  were  about  me 
all  the  time;  I  dwelt  amid  its  events  and  places,  and 
I  did  not  see  how  I  could  welcome  my  guest  among 
them,  or  abandon  them  for  him.  Still,  when  he  actu- 
ally arrived,  and  I  took  his  hand  as  he  stepped  from 
the  train,  I  found  it  less  difficult  to  say  that  I  was  glad 
to  see  him  than  I  expected.  In  fact,  I  was  glad,  for  I 
could  not  look  upon  his  face  without  feeling  a  glow  of 
kindness  for  him.  I  had  not  the  least  trouble  in  iden- 
tifying him,  for  he  was  so  unlike  all  the  Americans  who 
dismounted  from  the  train  with  him,  and  who  all 
looked  hot,  worried,  and  anxious.  He  was  a  man  no 
longer  young,  but  in  what  we  call  the  heyday  of  life, 
when  our  own  people  are  so  absorbed  in  making  pro- 
vision for  the  future  that  they  may  be  said  not  to  live 
in  the  present  at  all.     This  Altrurian's  whole  counte- 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

nance,  and  especially  his  quiet,  gentle  eyes,  expressed 
a  vast  contemporaneity,  with  bounds  of  leisure  re- 
moved to  the  end  of  time;  or,  at  least,  this  was  the 
effect  of  something  in  them  which  I  am  obliged  to  re- 
port in  rather  fantastic  terms.  He  was  above  the 
middle  height,  and  he  carried  himself  vigorously.  His 
face  was  sunburned,  or  sea-burned,  where  it  was  not 
bearded ;  and,  although  I  knew  from  my  friend's  letter 
that  he  was  a  man  of  learning  and  distinction  in  his 
own  country,  I  should  never  have  supposed  him  a  per- 
son of  scholarly  life,  he  was  so  far  from  sicklied  over 
with  anything  like  the  pale  cast  of  thought.  When 
he  took  the  hand  I  offered  him  in  my  half-hearted 
welcome  he  gave  it  a  grasp  that  decided  me  to  confine 
our  daily  greetings  to  something  much  less  muscular. 

"  Let  me  have  your  bag,"  I  said,  as  we  do  when  we 
meet  people  at  the  train,  and  he  instantly  bestowed  a 
rather  heavy  valise  upon  me,  with  a  smile  in  his  be- 
nignant eyes,  as  if  it  had  been  the  greatest  favor. 
"  Have  you  got  any  checks  ?"  I  asked. 

"  Yes,"  he  said,  in  very  good  English,  but  with  an 
accent  new  to  me,  "  I  bought  two."  He  gave  them 
to  me,  and  I  passed  them  to  our  hotel  porter,  who  was 
waiting  there  with  the  baggage-cart.  Then  I  proposed 
that  we  should  walk  across  the  meadow  to  the  house, 
which  is  a  quarter  of  a  mile  or  so  from  the  station. 
We  started,  but  he  stopped  suddenly  and  looked  back 
over  his  shoulder.  "  Oh,  you  needn't  be  troubled  about 
your  trunks,"  I  said.  "  The  porter  will  get  them  to  the 
house  all  right.  They'll  be  in  your  room  by  the  time 
we  get  there." 

"  But  he's  putting  them  into  the  wagon  himself," 
said   the  Altrurian. 

'•  Yes;  he  always  does  that.     He's  a  strong  young 

fellow.     He'll  manage  it.     You  needn't — "     I  could 

4 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

not  finish  saying  he  need  not  mind  the  porter;  he 
was  rushing  back  to  the  station,  and  I  had  the  mor- 
tification of  seeing  him  take  an  end  of  each  trunk 
and  help  the  jiorter  toss  it  into  the  wagon ;  some  lighter 
pieces  he  put  in  himself,  and  he  did  not  stop  till  all 
the  baggage  the  train  had  left  was  disposed  of. 

I  stood  holding  his  valise,  unable  to  put  it  down 
in  my  embarrassment  at  this  eccentric  performance, 
which  had  been  evident  not  to  me  alone,  but  to  all  the 
people  who  arrived  by  the  train,  and  all  their  friends 
who  came  from  the  hotel  to  meet  them.  A  number 
of  these  passed  me  on  the  tally-ho  coach;  and  a  lady, 
who  had  got  her  husband  with  her  for  over  Sunday, 
and  was  in  very  good  spirits,  called  gayly  down  to  me : 
"  Your  friend  seems  fond  of  exercise  !" 

"  Yes,"  I  answered,  dryly ;  the  sparkling  repartee 
which  ought  to  have  come  to  my  help  failed  to  show 
up.  But  it  was  impossible  to  be  vexed  with  the  Al- 
trurian  when  he  returned  to  me,  unruffled  by  his  bout 
with  the  baggage  and  serenely  smiling. 

"  Do  you  know,"  he  said,  "  I  fancied  that  good  fel- 
low was  ashamed  of  my  helping  him.  I  hope  it  didn't 
seem  a  reflection  upon  him  in  any  way  before  your 
people  ?    I  ought  to  have  thought  of  that." 

"  I  guess  we  can  make  it  right  with  him.  I  dare 
say  he  felt  more  surprised  than  disgraced.  But  we 
must  make  haste  a  little  now;  your  train  was  half  an 
hour  late,  and  we  shall  not  stand  so  good  a  chance  for 
supper  if  we  are  not  there  pretty  promptly." 

"  lsTo  ?"  said  the  Altrurian.     "  Why  ?" 

"  Well,"  I  said,  with  evasive  lightness,  "  first  come, 
first  served,  you  know.     That's  human  nature." 

"  Is  it  ?"  he  returned,  and  he  looked  at  me  as  one 
does  who  suspects  another  of  joking. 

"  Well,  isn't  it  ?"  I  retorted ;  but  I  hurried  to  add : 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  Besides,  I  want  to  have  time  after  supper  to  show 
you  a  bit  of  our  landscape.  I  think  you'll  enjoy  it." 
I  knew  he  had  arrived  in  Boston  that  morning  by 
steamer,  and  I  now  thought  it  high  time  to  ask  him : 
"  Well,  what  do  you  think  of  America,  anyway  V*  I 
ought  really  to  have  asked  him  this  the  moment  he 
stepped  from  the  train. 

"  Oh,"  he  said,  "  I'm  intensely  interested,"  and  I 
perceived  that  he  spoke  with  a  certain  reservation. 
"  As  the  most  advanced  country  of  its  time,  I've  always 
been  very  curious  to  see  it." 

The  last  sentence  raised  my  dashed  spirits  again, 
and  I  said,  confidently :  "  You  must  find  our  system 
of  baggage-checks  delightful."  I  said  this  because 
it  is  one  of  the  first  things  we  brag  of  to  foreigners, 
and  I  had  the  habit  of  it.  "  By-the-way,"  I  ventured 
to  add,  "  I  suppose  you  meant  to  say  you  brought 
two  checks  when  I  asked  you  for  them  at  the  train 
just  now?    But  you  really  said  you  bought  them." 

"  Yes,"  the  Altrurian  replied,  "  I  gave  half  a  dollar 
apiece  for  them  at  the  station  in  Boston.  I  saw  other 
people  doing  it,"  he  explained,  noting  my  surprise. 
"  Isn't  it  the  custom  ?" 

"  I'm  happy  to  say  it  isn't  yet,  on  most  of  our  roads. 
They  were  tipping  the  baggage  -  man,  to  make  sure 
that  he  checked  their  baggage  in  time  and  put  it  on 
the  train.  I  had  to  do  that  myself  when  I  came  up ; 
otherwise  it  might  have  got  along  here  some  time  next 
day.     But  the  system  is  perfect." 

"  The  poor  man  looked  quite  worn  out,"  said  the 
Altrurian,  "  and  I  am  glad  I  gave  him  something.  He 
seemed  to  have  several  hundred  pieces  of  baggage  to 
look  after,  and  he  wasn't  embarrassed  like  your  porter 
by  my  helping  him  put  my  trunks  into  the  car.  May 
I  confess  that  the  meanness  of  the  station,  its  insuffi- 

6 


A  TRAVELER  FKOM  ALTRURIA 

cient  facilities,  its  shabby  waiting-rooms,  and  its  whole 
crowded  and  confused  appearance  gave  me  rather  a 
bad  impression?" 

"  I  know,"  I  had  to  own,  "  it's  shameful ;  but  you 
wouldn't  have  found  another  station  in  the  city  so 
bad." 

"  Ah,  then,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  I  suppose  this  par- 
ticular road  is  too  poor  to  employ  more  baggage-men 
or  build  new  stations;  they  seemed  rather  shabby  all 
the  way  up." 

"  Well,  no,"  I  was  obliged  to  confess,  "  it's  one  of 
the  richest  roads  in  the  country.  The  stock  stands  at 
about  180.  But  I'm  really  afraid  we  shall  be  late  to 
supper  if  we  don't  get  on,"  I  broke  off;  though  I  was 
not  altogether  sorry  to  arrive  after  the  porter  had  dis- 
posed of  the  baggage.  I  dreaded  another  display  of 
active  sympathy  on  the  part  of  my  strange  companion ; 
I  have  often  felt  sorry  myself  for  the  porters  of  hotels, 
but  I  have  never  thought  of  offering  to  help  them  han- 
dle the  heavy  trunks  that  they  manage. 

The  Altrurian  was  delighted  with  the  hotel;  and  iu 
fact  it  did  look  extremely  pretty,  with  its  branching 
piazzas  full  of  well-dressed  people,  and  its  green  lawns 
where  the  children  were  playing.  I  led  the  way  to 
the  room  which  I  had  taken  for  him  next  my  own ;  it 
was  simply  furnished,  but  it  was  sweet  with  matting, 
fresh  linen,  and  pure  whitewashed  walls.  I  flung  open 
the  window-blinds  and  let  him  get  a  glimpse  of  the 
mountains  purpling  under  the  sunset,  the  lake  beneath, 
and  the  deeply  foliaged  shores. 

"  Glorious !  glorious !"  he  sighed. 

"Yes,"  I  modestly  assented.  "We  think  that's 
rather  fine."  He  stood  tranced  before  the  window, 
and  I  thought  I  had  better  say :  "  Well,  now  I  can't 

give  you  much  time  to  get  the  dust  of  travel  off;  the 

7 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

dining-room  doors  close  at  eight,  and  we  must  hurry 
down." 

"  I'll  he  with  you  in  a  moment/'  he  said,  pulling  off 
his  coat. 

I  waited  impatiently  at  the  foot  of  the  stairs,  avoid- 
ing the  question  I  met  on  the  lips  and  in  the  eyes  of 
my  acquaintance.  The  fame  of  my  friend's  behavior 
at  the  station  must  have  spread  through  the  whole 
place;  and  everybody  wished  to  know  who  he  was.  I 
answered  simply  he  was  a  traveler  from  Altruria ;  and 
in  some  cases  I  went  further  and  explained  that  the 
Altrurians  were  peculiar. 

In  much  less  time  than  it  seemed  my  friend  found 
me;  and  then  I  had  a  little  compensation  for  my  suf- 
fering in  his  behalf.  I  could  see  that,  whatever  peo- 
ple said  of  him,  they  felt  the  same  mysterious  liking 
at  sight  of  him  that  I  had  felt.  He  had  made  a  little 
change  in  his  dress,  and  I  perceived  that  the  women 
thought  him  not  only  good-looking  but  well-dressed. 
They  followed  him  with  their  eyes  as  we  went  into 
the  dining-room,  and  I  was  rather  proud  of  being  with 
him,  as  if  I  somehow  shared  the  credit  of  his  clothes 
and  good  looks.  The  Altrurian  himself  seemed  most 
struck  with  the  head-waiter,  who  showed  us  to  our 
places,  and  while  we  were  waiting  for  our  supper  I 
found  a  chance  to  explain  that  he  was  a  divinity  stu- 
dent from  one  of  the  fresh-water  colleges,  and  was 
serving  here  during  his  summer  vacation.  This  seemed 
to  interest  my  friend  so  much  that  I  went  on  to  tell 
him  that  many  of  the  waitresses,  whom  he  saw  stand- 
ing there  subject  to  the  order  of  the  guests,  were 
country  school-mistresses  in  the  winter. 

"  Ah,  that  is  as  it  should  be,"  ho  said  ;  "  that  is  the 
kind  of  thino;  T  expected  to  meet  with  in  America." 

"  Yes,"  I  responded,  in  my  flattered  national  vanity, 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  if  America  means  anything  at  all  it  means  the  honor 
of  work  and  the  recognition  of  personal  worth  every- 
where. I  hope  you  are  going  to  make  a  long  stay 
with  us.  We  like  to  have  travelers  visit  us  who  can 
interpret  the  spirit  of  our  institutions  as  well  as  read 
their  letter.  As  a  rule  Europeans  never  quite  get 
our  point  of  view.  Now  a  great  many  of  these  wait- 
resses are  ladies,  in  the  true  sense  of  the  word — self- 
respectful,  intelligent,  refined,  and  fit  to  grace — " 

I  was  interrupted  by  the  noise  my  friend  made  in 
suddenly  pushing  back  his  chair  and  getting  to  his 
feet.  "What's  the  matter?"  I  asked.  "You're  not 
ill,  I  hope  ?" 

But  he  did  not  hear  me.  He  had  run  half  down 
the  dining-hall  toward  the  slender  young  girl  who  was 
bringing  us  our  supper.  I  had  ordered  rather  gener- 
ously, for  my  friend  had  owned  to  a  good  appetite, 
and  I  was  hungry  myself  with  waiting  for  him,  so 
that  the  tray  the  girl  carried  was  piled  up  with  heavy 
dishes.  To  my  dismay  I  saw,  rather  than  heard  at 
that  distance,  the  Altrurian  enter  into  a  polite  contro- 
versy with  her,  and  then,  as  if  overcoming  all  her 
scruples  by  sheer  strength  of  will,  possess  himself  of 
the  tray  and  make  off  with  it  toward  our  table.  The 
poor  child  followed  him,  blushing  to  her  hair;  the 
head  -  waiter  stood  looking  helplessly  on ;  the  guests, 
who  at  that  late  hour  were  fortunately  few,  were  sim- 
ply aghast  at  the  scandal;  the  Altrurian  alone  seemed 
to  think  his  conduct  the  most  natural  thing  in  the 
world.  He  put  the  tray  on  the  side-table  near  us,  and 
in  spite  of  our  waitress's  protests  insisted  upon  ar- 
ranging the  little  bird-bath  dishes  before  our  plates. 
Then  at  last  he  sat  down,  and  the  girl,  flushed  and 
tremulous,  left  the  room,  as  I  could  not  help  suspecting, 
to  have  a  good  cry  in  the  kitchen.     She  did  not  come 


A  TRAVELER  FEOM  ALTKUKIA 

back,  and  the  bead-waiter,  who  was  perhaps  afraid  to 
send  another  in  her  place,  looked  after  our  few  wants 
himself.  He  kept  a  sharp  eye  on  my  friend,  as  if  he 
were  not  quite  sure  he  was  safe,  but  the  Altrurian  re- 
sumed the  conversation  with  all  that  lightness  of  spir- 
its which  I  noticed  in  him  after  he  helped  the  porter 
with  the  baggage.  I  did  not  think  it  the  moment  to 
take  him  to  task  for  what  he  had  just  done;  I  was 
not  even  sure  that  it  was  the  part  of  a  host  to  do  so  at 
all,  and  between  the  one  doubt  and  the  other  I  left 
the  burden  of  talk  to  him. 

"  What  a  charming  young  creature !"  he  began.  "  I 
never  saw  anything  prettier  than  the  way  she  had  of 
refusing  my  help,  absolutely  without  coquetry  or  af- 
fectation of  any  kind.  She  is,  as  you  said,  a  perfect 
lady,  and  she  graces  her  work,  as  I  am  sure  she  would 
grace  any  exigency  of  life.  She  quite  realizes  my 
ideal  of  an  American  girl,  and  I  see  now  what  the 
spirit  of  vour  country  must  be  from  such  an  expression 
of  it." 

I  wished  to  tell  him  that  while  a  country  school- 
teacher who  waits  at  table  in  a  summer  hotel  is 
very  much  to  be  respected  in  her  sphere,  she  is  not 
regarded  with  that  high  honor  which  some  other  women 
command  among  us;  but  I  did  not  find  this  very 
easy,  after  what  I  had  said  of  our  esteem  for  labor; 
and  while  I  was  thinking  how  I  could  hedge,  my  friend 
went  on. 

"  I  liked  England  greatly,  and  I  liked  the  Eng- 
lish, but  I  could  not  like  the  theory  of  their  civili- 
zation or  the  aristocratic  structure  of  their  society. 
It  seemed  to  me  iniquitous,  for  we  believe  that 
inequality  and  iniquity  are  the  same  in  the  last  an- 
alysis." 

At  this  I  found  myself  able  to  say :  "  Yes,  there  is 

10 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

something  terrible,  something  shocking,  in  the  frank 
brutality  with  which  Englishmen  affirm  the  essential 
inequality  of  men.  The  affirmation  of  the  essential 
equality  of  men  was  the  first  point  of  departure  with 
us  when  we  separated  from  them." 

"  I  know,"  said  the  Altrurian.  "  How  grandly  it 
is  expressed  in  your  glorious  Declaration !" 

"  Ah,  you  have  read  our  Declaration  of  Indepen- 
dence, then?" 

"  Every  Altrurian  has  read  that,"  answered  my 
friend. 

"  Well,"  I  went  on  smoothly,  and  I  hoped  to  ren- 
der what  I  was  going  to  say  the  means  of  enlightening 
him  without  offence  concerning  the  little  mistake  he 
had  just  made  with  the  waitress,  "  of  course  we  don't 
take  that  in  its  closest  literality." 

"  I  don't  understand  you,"  he  said. 

"  Why,  you  know  it  was  rather  the  political  than 
the  social  traditions  of  England  that  we  broke  with, 
in  the  Revolution." 

"  How  is  that  ?"  he  returned.  "  Didn't  you  break 
with  monarchy  and  nobility,  and  ranks  and  classes  ?" 

"  Yes,  we  broke  with  all  those  things." 

"  But  I  found  them  a  part  of  the  social  as  well  as 
the  political  structure  in  England.  You  have  no  kings 
or  nobles  here.     Have  you  any  ranks  or  classes  ?" 

"  Well,  not  exactly  in  the  English  sense.  Our  ranks 
and  classes,  such  as  we  have,  are  what  I  may  call  volun- 
tary." 

"  Oh,  I  understand.     I  suppose  that  from  time  to 

time  certain  ones  among  you  feel  the  need  of  serving, 

and    ask   leave   of   the   commonwealth   to   subordinate 

themselves  to  the  rest  of  the  state  and  perform   all 

the  lowlier  offices  in  it.     Such  persons  must  be  held  in 

peculiar  honor.     Is  it  something  like  that  ?" 

11 


A  TEAVELEE  FKOM  ALTRURIA 

•'  Well,  no,  I  can't  say  it's  quite  like  that.  In  fact, 
I  think  I'd  better  let  you  trust  to  your  own  observa- 
tion of  our  life." 

"  But  I'm  sure,"  said  the  Altrurian,  with  a  sim- 
plicity so  fine  that  it  was  a  long  time  before  I  could 
believe  it  quite  real,  "  that  I  shall  approach  it  so  much 
more  intelligently  with  a  little  instruction  from  you. 
You  say  that  your  social  divisions  are  voluntary.  But 
do  I  understand  that  those  who  serve  among  you  do 
not  wish  to  do  so  ?" 

"  Well,  I  don't  suppose  they  would  serve  if  they 
could  help  it,"  I  replied. 

"  Surely,"  said  the  Altrurian,  with  a  look  of  horror, 
"  you  don't  mean  that  they  are  slaves." 

"  Oh  no !  oh  no !"  I  said ;  "  the  war  put  an  end  to 
that.    We  are  all  free  now,  black  and  white." 

"  But  if  they  do  not  wish  to  serve,  and  are  not  held 
in  peculiar  honor  for  serving — " 

"  I  see  that  my  word  '  voluntary '  has  misled  you," 
I  put  in.  "  It  isn't  the  word  exactly.  The  divisions 
among  us  are  rather  a  process  of  natural  selection. 
You  will  see,  as  you  get  better  acquainted  with  the 
workings  of  our  institutions,  that  there  are  no  arbi- 
trary distinctions  here,  but  the  fitness  of  the  wrork 
for  the  man  and  the  man  for  the  work  determines  the 
social  rank  that  each  one  holds." 

"  Ah,  that  is  fine !"  cried  the  Altrurian,  with  a  glow 
of  enthusiasm.  "  Then  I  suppose  that  these  intelli- 
gent young  people  who  teach  school  in  winter  and 
serve  at  table  in  the  summer  are  in  a  sort  of  pro- 
visional state,  waiting  for  the  process  of  natural  selec- 
tion to  determine  whether  they  shall  finally  be  teachers 
or  waiters." 

"  Yes,  it  might  be  stated  in  some  such  terms,"  I 
assented,   though   I   was   not   altogether   easy   in   my 

12 


A  TRAVELER  EROM  ALTRURIA 

mind.  It  seemed  to  me  that  I  was  not  quite  candid 
with  this  most  candid  spirit.  I  added :  "  You  know 
we  are  a  sort  of  fatalists  here  in  America.  We  are 
great  believers  in  the  doctrine  that  it  will  all  come  out 
right  in  the  end." 

"  Ah,  I  don't  wonder  at  that,"  said  the  Altrurian, 
"  if  the  process  of  natural  selection  works  so  perfectly 
among  you  as  you  say.  But  I  am  afraid  I  don't  un- 
derstand this  matter  of  your  domestic  service  yet.  I 
believe  you  said  that  all  honest  work  is  honored  in 
America.  Then  no  social  slight  attaches  to  service,  I 
suppose  8" 

"  Well,  I  can't  say  that,  exactly.  The  fact  is,  a  cer- 
tain social  slight  does  attach  to  service,  and  that  is 
one  reason  why  I  don't  quite  like  to  have  students 
wait  at  table.  It  won't  be  pleasant  for  them  to  re- 
member it  in  after-life,  and  it  won't  be  pleasant  for 
their  children  to  remember  it." 

"  Then  the  slight  would  descend  ?" 

"  I  think  it  would.  One  wouldn't  like  to  think 
one's  father  or  mother  had  been  at  service." 

The  Altrurian  said  nothing  for  a  moment.  Then 
he  remarked :  "  So  it  seems  that  while  all  honest  work 
is  honored  among  you,  there  are  some  kinds  of  honest 
work  that  are  not  honored  so  much  as  others." 

"  Yes." 

"Why?" 

"  Because  some  occupations  are  more  degrading  than 
others." 

"  But  why  ?"  he  persisted,  as  I  thought,  a  little 
imreasonably. 

"  Really,"  I  said,  "  I  think  I  must  leave  you  to 
imagine." 

"  I  am  afraid  I  can't,"  he  said,  sadly.     "  Then,  if 

domestic  service  is  degrading  in  your  eyes,  and  people 
2  13 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

are  not  willing  servants  among  you,  may  I  ask  why 
any  are  servants  V* 

"  It  is  a  question  of  bread-and-butter.  They  are 
obliged  to  be." 

"  That  is,  they  are  forced  to  do  work  that  is  hateful 
and  disgraceful  to  them  because  they  cannot  live  with- 
out?" 

"  Excuse  me,"  I  said,  not  at  all  liking  this  sort  of 
pursuit,  and  feeling  it  fair  to  turn  even  upon  a  guest 
who  kept  it  up.     "  Isn't  it  so  with  you  in  Altruria  ?" 

"  It  was  so  once,"  he  admitted,  "  but  not  now.  In 
fact,  it  is  like  a  waking  dream  to  find  one's  self  in  the 
presence  of  conditions  here  that  we  outlived  so  long 
ago." 

There  was  an  unconscious  superiority  in  this  speech 
that  nettled  me,  and  stung  me  to  retort :  "  We  do  not 
expect  to  outlive  them.  We  regard  them  as  final,  and 
as  indestructibly  based  in  human  nature  itself." 

"  Ah,"  said  the  Altrurian,  with  a  delicate  and  caress- 
ing courtesy,  "  have  I  said  something  offensive  ?" 

"  Not  at  all,"  I  hastened  to  answer.  "  It  is  not 
surprising  that  you  did  not  get  our  point  of  view  ex- 
actly. You  will  by-and-by,  and  then,  I  think,  you 
will  see  that  it  is  the  true  one.  We  have  found  that 
the  logic  of  our  convictions  could  not  be  applied  to 
the  problem  of  domestic  service.  It  is  everywhere  a 
very  curious  and  perplexing  problem.  The  simple  old 
solution  of  the  problem  was  to  own  your  servants; 
but  we  found  that  this  was  not  consistent  with  the 
spirit  of  our  free  institutions.  As  soon  as  it  was 
abandoned  the  anomaly  began.  We  had  outlived  the 
primitive  period  when  the  housekeeper  worked  with 
her  domestics  and  they  were  her  help,  and  were  called 
so;  and  we  had  begun  to  have  servants  to  do  all  the 

household  work,  and  to  call  them  so.     This  state  of 

14 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

things  never  seemed  right  to  some  of  our  purest  and 
best  people.  They  fancied,  as  you  seem  to  have  done, 
that  to  compel  people  through  their  necessities  to  do 
your  hateful  drudgery,  and  to  wound  and  shame  them 
with  a  name  which  every  American  instinctively  re- 
sents, was  neither  republican  nor  Christian.  Some  of 
our  thinkers  tried  to  mend  matters  by  making  their 
domestics  a  part  of  their  families ;  and  in  the  life  of 
Emerson  you'll  find  an  amusing  account  of  his  attempt 
to  have  his  servant  eat  at  the  same  table  with  himself 
and  his  wife.  It  wouldn't  work.  He  and  his  wife 
could  stand  it,  but  the  servant  couldn't." 

I  paused,  for  this  was  where  the  laugh  ought  to 
have  come  in.  The  Altrurian  did  not  laugh,  he  merely 
asked,  "Why?" 

"  Well,  because  the  servant  knew,  if  they  didn't, 
that  they  were  a  whole  world  apart  in  their  traditions, 
and  were  no  more  fit  to  associate  than  !N"ew-Englanders 
and  New-Zealanders.  In  the  mere  matter  of  educa- 
tion—" 

"  But  I  thought  you  said  that  these  young  girls 
who  wait  at  table  here  were  teachers." 

"  Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon ;  I  ought  to  have  ex- 
plained. By  this  time  it  had  become  impossible,  as 
it  now  is,  to  get  American  girls  to  take  service  except 
on  some  such  unusual  terms  as  we  have  in  a  summer 
hotel ;  and  the  domestics  were  already  ignorant  for- 
eigners, fit  for  nothing  else.  In  such  a  place  as  this 
it  isn't  so  bad.  It  is  more  as  if  the  girls  worked  in  a 
shop  or  a  factory.  They  command  their  own  time,  in 
a  measure,  their  hours  are  tolerably  fixed,  and  they 
have  one  another's  society.  In  a  private  family  they 
would  be  subject  to  order  at  all  times,  and  they  would 
have  no  social  life.      They  would  be  in  the  family, 

but  not  of  it.     American  girls  understand  this,   and 

15 


A     TRAVELER    FROM    ALTIIUEIA 

so  they  won't  go  out  to  service  in  the  usual  way. 
Even  in  a  summer  hotel  the  relation  has  its  odious 
aspects.  The  system  of  giving  fees  seems  to  me  de- 
grading to  those  who  have  to  take  them.  To  offer  a 
student  or  a  teacher  a  dollar  for  personal  service — it 
isn't  right,  or  I  can't  make  it  so.  In  fact,  the  whole 
thing  is  rather  anomalous  with  us.  The  best  that  you 
can  say  of  it  is  that  it  works,  and  we  don't  know 
what  else  to  do." 

"  Eut  I  don't  see  yet,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  just 
why  domestic  service  is  degrading  in  a  country  where 
all  kinds  of  work  are  honored." 

"  Well,  my  dear  fellow,  I  have  done  my  best  to 
explain.  As  I  intimated  before,  we  distinguish;  and 
in  the  different  kinds  of  labor  we  distinguish  against 
domestic  service.  I  dare  say  it  is  partly  because  of 
the  loss  of  independence  which  it  involves.  People 
naturally  despise  a  dependant." 

"  Why  ?"  asked  the  Altrurian,  with  that  innocence 
of  his  which  I  was  beginning  to  find  rather  trying. 

"  Why  ?"  I  retorted.  "  Because  it  implies  weak- 
ness." 

"  And  is  weakness  considered  despicable  among 
you  V  he  pursued. 

"  In  every  community  it  is  despised  practically,  if 
not  theoretically,"  I  tried  to  explain.  "  The  great 
thing  that  America  has  done  is  to  offer  the  race  an 
opportunity  —  the  opportunity  for  any  man  to  rise 
above  the  rest  and  to  take  the  highest  place,  if  he  is 
able."  I  had  always  been  proud  of  this  fact,  and  I 
thought  I  had  put  it  very  well,  but  the  Altrurian  did 
not  seem  much  impressed  by  it. 

He  said :   "I  do  not  see  how  it  differs  from  any 

country  of  the  past  in  that.     But  perhaps  you  mean 

that  to  rise  carries  with  it  an  obligation  to  those  be- 

16 


A  TKAVELEK  FROM  ALTEUEIA 

low.  '  If  any  is  first  among  you,  let  him  be  your 
servant.'     Is  it  something  like  that?" 

"  Well,  it  is  not  quite  like  that,"  I  answered,  re- 
membering how  very  little  our  self-made  men  as  a 
class  had  done  for  others.  "  Every  one  is  expected  to 
look  out  for  himself  here.  I  fancy  that  there  would 
be  very  little  rising  if  men  were  expected  to  rise  for 
the  sake  of  others,  in  America.  How  is  it  with  you 
in  Altruria  ?"  I  demanded,  hoping  to  get  out  of  a 
certain  discomfort  I  felt  in  that  way.  "Do  your 
risen  men  generally  devote  themselves  to  the  good  of 
the  community  after  they  get  to  the  top  ?" 

"  There  is  no  rising  among  us,"  he  said,  with  what 
seemed  a  perception  of  the  harsh  spirit  of  my  ques- 
tion; and  he  paused  a  moment  before  he  asked  in  his 
turn :  "  How  do  men  rise  among  you  f" 

"  That  would  be  rather  a  long  story,"  I  replied. 
"  But,  putting  it  in  the  rough,  I  should  say  that  they 
rose  by  their  talents,  their  shrewdness,  their  ability 
to  seize  an  advantage  and  turn  it  to  their  own  ac- 
count." 

"  And  is  that  considered  noble  ?" 

"  It  is  considered  smart.  It  is  considered  at  the 
worst  far  better  than  a  dead  level  of  equality.  Are 
all  men  equal  in  Altruria  ?  Are  they  all  alike  gifted 
or  beautiful,  or  short  or  tall?" 

"  No,  they  are  only  equal  in  duties  and  in  rights. 
But,  as  you  said  just  now,  that  is  a  very  long  story. 
Are  they  equal  in  nothing  here  ?" 

"  They  are  equal  in  opportunities." 

"  Ah !"  breathed  the  Altrurian,  "  I  am  glad  to  hear 
that." 

I  began  to  feel  a  little  uneasy,  and  I  was  not  quite 

sure  that  this  last  assertion  of  mine  would  hold  water. 

Everybody  but  ourselves  had  now  left  the  dining-room, 

17 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

and  I  saw  the  head-waiter  eying  us  impatiently.  I 
pushed  back  my  chair  and  said:  "I'm  sorry  to  seem 
to  hurry  you,  but  I  should  like  to  show  you  a  very 
pretty  sunset  effect  we  have  here  before  it  is  too  dark. 
When  we  get  back,  I  want  to  introduce  you  to  a  few 
of  my  friends.  Of  course,  I  needn't  tell  you  that 
there  is  a  good  deal  of  curiosity  about  you,  especially 
among  the  ladies." 

"  Yes,  I  found  that  the  case  in  England,  largely. 
It  was  the  women  who  cared  most  to  meet  me.  I 
understand  that  in  America  society  is  managed  even 
more  by  women  than  it  is  in  England." 

"  It's  entirely  in  their  hands,"  I  said,  with  the 
satisfaction  we  all  feel  in  the  fact.  "  We  have  no 
other  leisure  class.  The  richest  men  among  us  are 
generally  hard  workers;  devotion  to  business  is  the 
rule;  but,  as  soon  as  a  man  reaches  the  point  where 
he  can  afford  to  pay  for  domestic  service,  his  wife  and 
daughters  expect  to  be  released  from  it  to  the  culti- 
vation of  their  minds  and  the  enjoyment  of  social 
pleasures.  It's  quite  right.  That  is  what  makes  them 
so  delightful  to  foreigners.  You  must  have  heard 
their  praises  chanted  in  England.  The  English  find 
our  men  rather  stupid,  I  believe;  but  they  think  our 
women  are  charming." 

"  Yes,  I  was  told  that  the  wives  of  their  nobility 
were  sometimes  Americans,"  said  the  Altrurian.  "  The 
English  think  that  3^011  regard  such  marriages  as  a 
great  honor,  and  that  they  are  very  gratifying  to  your 
national  pride." 

"  Well,  I  suppose  that  is  so  in  a  measure,"  I  con- 
fessed. "  I  imagine  that  it  will  not  be  long  before 
the  English  aristocracy  derives  as  largely  from  Amer- 
ican millionaires  as  from  kings'  mistresses.     Not,"  I 

added,  virtuously,  "  that  we  approve  of  aristocracy." 

18 


A  TKAVELEK  FKOM  ALTEUKIA 

"  No,  I  understand  that,"  said  the  Altrurian.  "  I 
shall  hope  to  get  your  point  of  view  in  this  matter 
more  distinctly  by-and-by.  As  yet,  I'm  a  little  vague 
about  it." 

"  I  think  I  can  gradually  make  it  clear  to  you,"  I 
returned. 


II 


We  left  the  hotel,  and  I  began  to  walk  my  friend 
across  the  meadow  toward  the  lake.  I  wished  him 
to  see  the  reflection  of  the  afterglow  in  its  still  waters, 
with  the  noble  lines  of  the  mountain-range  that  glassed 
itself  there;  the  effect  is  one  of  the  greatest  charms 
of  that  lovely  region,  the  sojourn  of  the  sweetest  sum- 
mer in  the  world,  and  I  am  always  impatient  to  show 
it  to  strangers. 

We  climbed  the  meadow  wall  and  passed  through 
;i  stretch  of  woods  to  a  path  leading  down  to  the 
shore,  and,  as  we  loitered  along  in  the  tender  gloom 
of  the  forest,  the  music  of  the  hermit-thrushes  rang 
all  round  us  like  crystal  bells,  like  silver  flutes,  like 
the  drip  of  fountains,  like  the  choiring  of  still-eyed 
cherubim.  We  stopped  from  time  to  time  and  listened, 
while  the  shy  birds  sang  unseen  in  their  covert  of 
shadows;  but  we  did  not  speak  till  we  emerged  from 
the  trees  and  suddenly  stood  upon  the  naked  knoll 
overlooking  the  lake. 

Then  I  explained :  "  The  woods  used  to  come  down 
to  the  shore  here,  and  we  had  their  mystery  and  mu- 
sic to  the  water's  edge;  but  last  winter  the  owner 
cut  the  timber  off.  It  looks  rather  ragged  now."  I 
had  to  recognize  the  fact,  for  I  saw  the  Altrurian 
staring  about  him  over  the  clearing  in  a  kind  of  horror. 
It  \v;is  a  squalid  ruin,  a  graceless  desolation,  which  not 
even   the   pitying  twilight  could   soften.     The  stumps 

showed  their  hideous  mutilation  everywhere;  the  brush 

20 


A  TRAVELER  FRO  31  ALTRURIA 

bad  been  burned,  and  the  fires  had  scorched  and  black- 
ened the  lean  soil  of  the  hill-slope  and  blasted  it  with 
sterility.  A  few  weak  saplings,  withered  by  the  flames, 
drooped  and  straggled  about ;  it  would  be  a  century 
before  the  forces  of  nature  could  repair  the  waste. 

"  You  say  the  owner  did  this  ?"  said  the  Altrurian. 
"  Who  is  the  owner  ?" 

"  Well,  it  does  seem  too  bad,"  I  answered,  evasively. 
"  There  has  been  a  good  deal  of  feeling  about  it.  The 
neighbors  tried  to  buy  him  off  before  he  began  the  de- 
struction, for  they  knew  the  value  of  the  woods  as  an 
attraction  to  summer-boarders ;  the  city  cottagers,  of 
course,  wanted  to  save  them,  and  together  they  offered 
for  the  land  pretty  nearly  as  much  as  the  timber  was 
worth.  But  he  had  got  it  into  his  head  that  the  land 
here  by  the  lake  would  sell  for  building  lots  if  it  was 
cleared,  and  he  could  make  money  on  that  as  well  as 
on  the  trees;  and  so  they  had  to  go.  Of  course,  one 
might  say  that  he  was  deficient  in  public  spirit,  but  I 
don't  blame  him,  altogether." 

"  No,"  the  Altrurian  assented,  somewhat  to  my  sur- 
prise, I  confess. 

I  resumed :  "  There  was  no  one  else  to  look  after  his 
interests,  and  it  was  not  only  his  right  but  his  duty 
to  get  the  most  he  could  for  himself  and  his  own,  ac- 
cording to  his  best  light.  That  is  what  I  tell  people 
when  they  fall  foul  of  him  for  his  want  of  public1 
spirit." 

"  The  trouble  seems  to  be,  then,  in  the  system  that 
obliges  each  man  to  be  the  guardian  of  his  own  inter- 
ests.   Is  that  what  you  blame  ?" 

"  No,  I  consider  it  a  very  perfect  system.  It  is 
based  upon  individuality,  and  we  believe  that  indi- 
viduality is  the  principle  that  differences  civilized  men 
from  savages,  from  the  lower  animals,  and  makes  us  a 

•21 


A  TKAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

nation  instead  of  a  tribe  or  a  herd.  There  isn't  one  of 
us,  no  matter  bow  much  be  censured  this  man's  want 
of  public  spirit,  but  would  resent  the  slightest  inter- 
ference with  his  property  rights.  The  woods  were  his ; 
be  had  the  right  to  do  what  he  pleased  with  his  own." 

"  Do  I  understand  you  that,  in  America,  a  man  may 
do  what  is  wrong  with  his  own  ?" 

"  He  may  do  anything  with  his  own." 

"  To  the  injury  of  others  ?" 

"  Well,  not  in  person  or  property.  But  he  may  hurt 
them  in  taste  and  sentiment  as  much  as  he  likes.  Can't 
a  man  do  what  he  pleases  with  his  own  in  Altruria  ?" 

"  No,  he  can  only  do  right  with  his  own." 

"  And  if  he  tries  to  do  wrong,  or  what  the  community 
thinks  is  wrong  ?" 

"  Then  the  community  takes  his  own  from  him." 
Before  I  could  think  of  anything  to  say  to  this  he 
went  on :  "  But  I  wish  you  would  explain  to  me  why 
it  was  left  to  this  man's  neighbors  to  try  and  get  him 
to  sell  his  portion  of  the  landscape  ?" 

"  Why,  bless  my  soul !"  I  exclaimed,  "  who  else  was 
there  ?  You  wouldn't  have  expected  to  take  up  a  col- 
lection among  the  summer-boarders  ?" 

"  That  wouldn't  have  been  so  unreasonable ;  but  I 
didn't  mean  that.  Was  there  no  provision  for  such  an 
exigency  in  your  laws  ?  Wasn't  the  state  empowered 
to  buy  him  off  at  the  full  value  of  his  timber  and  his 
land?" 

"  Certainly  not,"  I  replied.  "  That  would  be  rank 
paternalism." 

It  began  to  get  dark,  and  I  suggested  that  we  had 
better  be  going  back  to  the  hotel.  The  talk  seemed  al- 
ready to  have  taken  us  away  from  all  pleasure  in  the 
prospect ;  I  said,  as  we  found  our  way  through  the  rich, 

balsam-scented  twilight  of  the  woods,  where  one  joy- 

22 


A  TKAVELEE  FKOil  ALTKURIA 

haunted  thrush  was  still  singing :  "  You  know  that  in 
America  the  law  is  careful  not  to  meddle  with  a  man's 
private  affairs,  and  we  don't  attempt  to  legislate  per- 
sonal virtue." 

"  But  marriage,"  he  said — "  surely  you  have  the  in- 
stitution of  marriage  ?" 

I  was  really  annoyed  at  this.  I  returned,  sarcastical- 
ly :  "  Yes,  I  am  glad  to  say  that  there  we  can  meet  your 
expectation ;  we  have  marriage,  not  only  consecrated  by 
the  church,  but  established  and  defended  by  the  state. 
What  has  that  to  do  with  the  question  %" 

"  And  you  consider  marriage,"  he  pursued,  "  the 
citadel  of  morality,  the  fountain  of  all  that  is  pure 
and  good  in  your  private  life,  the  source  of  home  and 
the  image  of  heaven  ?" 

"  There  are  some  marriages,"  I  said,  with  a  touch  of 
our  national  humor,  "  that  do  not  quite  fill  the  bill,  but 
that  is  certainly  our  ideal  of  marriage." 

"  Then  why  do  you  say  that  you  have  not  legislated 
personal  virtue  in  America  ?"  he  asked.  "  You  have 
laws,  I  believe,  against  theft  and  murder,  and  slander 
and  incest,  and  perjury  and  drunkenness  ?" 

"  Why,  certainly." 

"  Then  it  appears  to  me  that  you  have  legislated 
honesty,  regard  for  human  life,  regard  for  character, 
abhorrence  of  unnatural  vice,  good  faith,  and  sobrietv. 
I  was  told  on  the  train  coming  up,  by  a  gentleman  who 
was  shocked  at  the  sight  of  a  man  beating  his  horse, 
that  you  even  had  laws  against  cruelty  to  animals." 

"  Yes,  and  I  am  happy  to  say  that  they  are  enforced 
to  such  a  degree  that  a  man  cannot  kill  a  cat  cruelly 
without  being  punished  for  it."  The  Altrurian  did  not 
follow  up  his  advantage,  and  I  resolved  not  to  be  out- 
done in  magnanimity.  "  Come,  I  will  own  that  you 
have  the  best  of  me  on  those  points.    I  must  say  you've 

23 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

trapped  me  very  neatly,  too ;  I  can  enjoy  a  thing  of  that 
kind  when  it's  well  done,  and  I  frankly  knock  under. 
But  I  had  in  mind  something  altogether  different  when 
I  spoke.  I  was  thinking  of  those  idealists  who  want 
to  bind  us  hand  and  foot  and  render  us  the  slaves  of  a 
state  where  the  most  intimate  relations  of  life  shall  be 
penetrated  by  legislation  and  the  very  hearthstone  shall 
be  a  tablet  of  laws." 

"  Isn't  marriage  a  rather  intimate  relation  of  life !" 
asked  the  Altrurian.  "  And  I  understood  that  gentle- 
man on  the  train  to  say  that  you  had  laws  against 
cruelty  to  children,  and  societies  established  to  see  them 
enforced.  You  don't  consider  such  laws  an  invasion 
of  the  home,  do  you,  or  a  violation  of  its  immunities  ?  I 
imagine,"  he  went  on,  "  that  the  difference  between 
your  civilization  and  ours  is  only  one  of  degree,  after 
all,  and  that  America  and  Altruria  are  really  one  at 
heart." 

I  thought  his  compliment  a  bit  hyperbolical,  but  I 
saw  that  it  was  honestly  meant,  and  as  we  Americans 
are  first  of  all  patriots,  and  vain  for  our  country  before 
we  are  vain  for  ourselves,  I  was  not  proof  against  the 
flattery  it  conveyed  to  me  civically  if  not  personally. 

We  were  now  drawing  near  the  hotel,  and  I  felt  a 
certain  glow  of  pleasure  in  its  gay  effect  on  the  pretty 
knoll  where  it  stood.  In  its  artless  and  accidental 
architecture  it  was  not  unlike  one  of  our  immense  coast- 
wise steamboats.  The  twilight  had  thickened  to  dusk, 
and  the  edifice  was  brilliantly  lighted  with  electrics, 
story  above  story,  which  streamed  into  the  gloom  around 
like  the  lights  of  saloon  and  state-room.  The  corner  of 
wood  making  into  the  meadow  hid  the  station  ;  there 
was  no  other  building  in  sight;  the  hotel  seemed  riding 
at  anchor  on  the  swell  of  a  placid  sea.     I  was  going  to 

call  the  Altrurian's  attention  to  this  fanciful   resem- 

24 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

blance  when  I  remembered  that  he  had  not  been  in  our 
country  long  enough  to  have  seen  a  Fall  River  boat, 
and  I  made  toward  the  house  without  wasting  the  com- 
parison upon  him.  But  I  treasured  it  up  in  my  own 
mind,  intending  some  day  to  make  a  literary  use  of  it. 

The  guests  were  sitting  in  friendly  groups  about  the 
piazzas  or  in  rows  against  the  walls,  the  ladies  with 
their  gossip  and  the  gentlemen  with  their  cigars.  The 
night  had  fallen  cool  after  a  hot  day,  and  they  all  had 
the  effect  of  having  cast  off  care  with  the  burden  of 
the  week  that  was  past,  and  to  be  steeping  themselves 
in  the  innocent  and  simple  enjoyment  of  the  hour. 
They  were  mostly  middle-aged  married  folk,  but  some 
were  old  enough  to  have  sons  and  daughters  among  the 
young  people  who  went  and  came  in  a  long,  wandering 
promenade  of  the  piazzas,  or  wove  themselves  through 
the  waltz  past  the  open  windows  of  the  great  parlor; 
the  music  seemed  one  with  the  light  that  streamed  far 
out  on  the  lawn  flanking  the  piazzas.  Every  one  was 
well-dressed  and  comfortable  and  at  peace,  and  I  felt 
that  our  hotel  was  in  some  sort  a  microcosm  of  the  re- 
public. 

We  involuntarily  paused,  and  I  heard  the  Altrurian 
murmur :  "  Charming,  charming !  This  is  really  de- 
lightful !" 

"  Yes,  isn't  it  ?"  I  returned,  with  a  glow  of  pride. 
"  Our  hotel  here  is  a  type  of  the  summer  hotel  every- 
where; it's  characteristic  in  not  having  anything  char- 
acteristic about  it;  and  I  rather  like  the  notion  of  the 
people  in  it  being  so  much  like  the  people  in  all  the 
others  that  you  would  feel  yourself  at  home  wherever 
you  met  such  a  company  in  such  a  house.  All  over 
the  country,  north  and  south,  wherever  you  find  a  group 
of  hills  or  a  pleasant  bit  of  water  or  a  stretch  of  coast, 
you'll  find  some  such  refuge  as  this  for  our  weary 

25 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTKURIA 

toilers.  We  began  to  discover  some  time  ago  that  it 
would  not  do  to  cut  open  the  goose  that  laid  our  golden 
eggs,  even  if  it  looked  like  an  eagle,  and  kept  on  perch- 
ing on  our  banners  just  as  if  nothing  had  happened. 
We  discovered  that,  if  we  continued  to  kill  ourselves 
with  hard  work,  there  would  be  no  Americans  pretty 
soon." 

The  Altrurian  laughed.  "  How  delightfully  you  put 
it !  How  quaint !  How  picturesque  !  Excuse  me,  but 
I  can't  help  expressing  my  pleasure  in  it.  Our  own  hu- 
mor is  so  very  different." 

"  Ah,"  I  said ;  "  what  is  your  humor  like  ?" 

"  I  could  hardly  tell  you,  I'm  afraid ;  I've  never  been 
much  of  a  humorist  myself." 

Again  a  cold  doubt  of  something  ironical  in  the  man 
went  through  me,  but  I  had  no  means  of  verifying  it, 
and  so  I  simply  remained  silent,  waiting  for  him  to 
prompt  me  if  he  wished  to  know  anything  further  about 
our  national  transformation  from  bees  perpetually  busy 
into  butterflies  occasionally  idle.  "  And  when  you  had 
made  that  discovery  ?"  he  suggested. 

"  Why,  we're  nothing  if  not  practical,  you  know,  and 
as  soon  as  we  made  that  discovery  we  stopped  killing 
ourselves  and  invented  the  summer  resort.  There  are 
very  few  of  our  business  or  professional  men  now  who 
don't  take  their  four  or  five  weeks'  vacation.  Their 
wives  go  off  early  in  the  summer,  and,  if  they  go  to  some 
resort  within  three  or  four  hours  of  the  city,  the  men 
leave  town  Saturday  afternoon  and  run  out,  or  come  up, 
and  spend  Sunday  with  their  families.  For  thirty- 
eight  hours  or  so  a  hotel  like  this  is  a  nest  of  happy 
homes." 

'  That  is  admirable,"  said  the  Altrurian.  "  You  are 
truly  a  practical  people.  The  ladies  come  early  in  the 
summer,  you  say  ?" 

26 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  Yes,  sometimes  in  the  beginning  of  June." 

"  What  do  they  come  for  V  asked  the  Altrurian. 

"  What  for  ?  Why,  for  rest !"  I  retorted,  with  some 
little  temper. 

"  But  I  thought  you  told  me  awhile  ago  that  as  soon 
as  a  husband  could  afford  it  he  relieved  his  wife  and 
daughters  from  all  household  work." 

"  So  he  does." 

"  Then  what  do  the  ladies  wish  to  rest  from  ?" 

"  From  care.  It  is  not  work  alone  that  kills.  They 
are  not  relieved  from  household  care  even  when  they 
are  relieved  from  household  work.  There  is  nothing 
so  killing  as  household  care.  Besides,  the  sex  seems 
to  be  born  tired.  To  be  sure,  there  are  some  observers 
of  our  life  who  contend  that  with  the  advance  of 
athletics  among  our  ladies,  with  boating  and  bathing, 
and  lawn-tennis  and  mountain-climbing  and  freedom 
from  care,  and  these  long  summers  of  repose,  our  wom- 
en are  likely  to  become  as  superior  to  the  men  physi- 
cally as  they  now  are  intellectually.  It  is  all  right. 
We  should  like  to  see  it  happen.  It  would  be  part  of 
the  national  joke." 

"  Oh,  have  you  a  national  joke  ?"  asked  the  Altru- 
rian. "  But,  of  course !  You  have  so  much  humor.  I 
wish  you  could  give  me  some  notion  of  it." 

"  Well,  it  is  rather  damaging  to  any  joke  to  explain 
it,"  I  replied,  "  and  your  only  hope  of  getting  at  ours 
is  to  live  into  it.  One  feature  of  it  is  the  confusion 
of  foreigners  at  the  sight  of  our  men's  willingness  to 
subordinate  themselves  to  our  women." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  find  that  very  bewildering,"  said  the 
Altrurian.  "  It  seems  to  me  a  generous  and  manly  trait 
of  the  American  character.  I'm  proud  to  say  that  it 
is  one  of  the  points  at  which  your  civilization  and  our 

own  touch.     There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  influence 

27 


A  TBAVELEB  FROM  ALTRIKIA 

of  women  in  your  public  affairs  must  be  of  the  greatest 
advantag<   to  you  ;  it  has  been  so  with  us." 

I  turned  and  stared  at  him,  but  he  remained  in- 
sensible to  my  astonishment,  perhaps  because  it  was 
now  too  dark  for  him  to  see  it.  "  Our  women  have  no 
influence  in  public  affairs,"  I  said,  quietly,  after  a  mo- 
ment. 

"  They  haven't  ?  Is  it  possible  ?  But  didn't  I  un- 
derstand you  to  imply  just  now  that  your  women  wort' 
better  educated  than  your  men  ?" 

"  Well,  I  suppose  that,  taking  all  sorts  and  conditions 
among  us,  the  women  are  as  a  rule  better  schooled,  if 
not  better  educated." 

"  Then,  apart  from  the  schooling,  they  are  not  more 
cultivated  ?" 

"  In  a  sense  you  might  say  they  were.  They  certain- 
ly go  in  for  a  lot  of  things  :  art  and  music,  and  Browning 
and  the  drama,  and  foreign  travel  and  psychology,  and 
political  economy  and  Heaven  knows  what  all.  They 
have  more  leisure  for  it ;  they  have  all  the  leisure  there 
is,  in  fact ;  our  young  men  have  to  go  into  business. 
I  suppose  you  may  say  our  women  are  more  cultivated 
than  our  men ;  yes,  I  think  there's  no  questioning  that. 
They  are  the  great  readers  among  us.  We  poor  devils 
of  authors  would  be  badly  off  if  it  were  not  for  our 
women.  In  fact,  no  author  could  make  a  reputation 
among  us  without  them.  American  literature  exists  be- 
cause American  women  appreciate  it  and  love  it." 

"  But  surely  your  men  read  books  ?" 

"  Some  of  them ;  not  many,  comparatively.  You 
will  often  hear  a  complacent  ass  of  a  husband  and 
father  say  to  an  author:  '  My  wife  and  (laughters  know 
your  books,  but  I  can't  find  time  for  anything  but  the 
papers  nowadays.  I  skim  them  over  at  breakfast,  or 
when  I'm  going  in  to  business  on  the  train.'     He  isn't 

28 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

the  least  ashamed  to  say  that  he  reads  nothing  but  the 
newspapers." 

"  Then  you  think  that  it  would  be  better  for  him  to 
read  books  ?" 

"  Well,  in  the  presence  of  four  or  five  thousand 
journalists  with  drawn  scalping-knives  I  should  not 
like  to  say  so.    Besides,  modesty  forbids." 

"  No,  but,  really,"  the  Altrurian  persisted,  "  you 
think  that  the  literature  of  a  book  is  more  carefully 
pondered  than  the  literature  of  a  daily  newspaper  ?" 

"  I  suppose  even  the  four  or  five  thousand  journalists 
with  drawn  scalping-knives  would  hardly  deny  that." 

"  And  it  stands  to  reason,  doesn't  it,  that  the  habitual 
reader  of  carefully  pondered  literature  ought  to  be  more 
thoughtful  than  the  readers  of  literature  which  is  not 
carefully  pondered  and  which  they  merely  skim  over 
on  their  way  to  business  ?" 

"  I  believe  we  began  by  assuming  the  superior  culture 
of  our  women,  didn't  we  ?  You'll  hardly  find  an  Ameri- 
can that  isn't  proud  of  it." 

"  Then,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  if  your  women  are 
generally  better  schooled  than  your  men,  and  more 
cultivated  and  more  thoughtful,  and  are  relieved  of 
household  work  in  such  great  measure,  and  even  of 
domestic  cares,  why  have  they  no  part  in  your  public 
affairs  ?" 

I  laughed,  for  I  thought  I  had  my  friend  at  last. 
"  For  the  best  of  all  possible  reasons :  they  don't  want 
it." 

"  Ah,  that's  no  reason,"  he  returned.  "  Why  don't 
they  want  it  ?" 

"  Really,"  I  said,  out  of  all  patience,  "  I  think  I  must 
let  you  ask  the  ladies  themselves,"  and  I  turned  and 
moved  again  toward  the  hotel,  but  the  Altrurian  gently 
detained  me. 

3  29 


A    TEAVELEE    FKOM    ALTliURIA 

"  Excuse  me,"  he  began. 
"  ATo,  no,"  I  said. 

" '  The  feast  is  set,  the  guests  are  met, 
May'st  hear  the  merry  din.* 

Come  in  and  see  the  young  people  dance." 

"  Wait,"  he  entreated ;  "  tell  me  a  little  more  about 
the  old  people  first.  This  digression  about  the  ladies 
has  been  very  interesting,  but  I  thought  you  were  going 
to  speak  of  the  men  here.  Who  are  they,  or,  rather,  what 
are  they  ?" 

"  Why,  as  I  said  before,  they  are  all  business  men 
and  professional  men;  people  Avho  spend  their  lives  in 
studies  and  counting-rooms  and  offices,  and  have  come 
up  here  for  a  few  weeks  or  a  few  days  of  well-earned 
repose.  They  are  of  all  kinds  of  occupations :  they  are 
lawyers  and  doctors,  and  clergymen  and  merchants,  and 
brokers  and  bankers.  There's  hardly  any  calling  you 
won't  find  represented  among  them.  As  I  was  thinking 
just  now,  our  hotel  is  a  sort  of  microcosm  of  the  Ameri- 
can republic." 

"  I  am  most  fortunate  in  finding  you  here,  where  I 
can  avail  myself  of  your  intelligence  in  making  my 
observations  of  your  life  under  such  advantageous  cir- 
cumstances. It  seems  to  me  that  with  your  help  I 
might  penetrate  the  fact  of  American  life,  possess  my- 
self of  the  mystery  of  your  national  joke,  without  stir- 
ring beyond  the  piazza  of  your  hospitable  hotel,"  said 
my  friend.  I  doubted  it,  but  one  does  not  lightly  put 
aside  a  compliment  like  that  to  one's  intelligence,  and 
I  said  I  should  be  very  happy  to  be  of  use  to  him.  He 
thanked  me,  and  said :  "  Then,  to  begin  with,  I  under- 
stand that  these  gentlemen  are  here  because  they  are 
all  overworked." 

"  Of  course.     You  can  have  no  conception  of  how 

30 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

hard  our  business  men  and  our  professional  men  work. 
I  suppose  there  is  nothing  like  it  anywhere  else  in  the 
world.  But,  as  I  said  before,  we  are  beginning  to  find 
that  we  cannot  burn  the  candle  at  both  ends  and  have 
it  last  long.  So  we  put  one  end  out  for  a  little  while 
every  summer.  Still,  there  are  frightful  wrecks  of 
men  strewn  all  along  the  course  of  our  prosperity, 
wrecks  of  mind  and  body.  Our  insane  asylums  are 
full  of  madmen  who  have  broken  under  the  tremen- 
dous strain,  and  every  country  in  Europe  abounds  in 
our  dyspeptics."  I  was  rather  proud  of  this  terrible 
fact ;  there  is  no  doubt  but  we  Americans  are  proud  of 
overworking  ourselves ;  Heaven  knows  why. 

The  Altrurian  murmured :  "  Awful !  Shocking !" 
But  I  thought  somehow  he  had  not  really  followed  me 
very  attentively  in  my  celebration  of  our  national  vio- 
lation of  the  laws  of  life  and  its  consequences.  "  I 
am  glad,"  he  went  on,  "  that  your  business  men  and 
professional  men  are  beginning  to  realize  the  folly  and 
wickedness  of  overwork.  Shall  I  find  some  of  your 
other  weary  workers  here,  too  ?" 

"  What  other  weary  workers  ?"  I  asked  in  turn,  for 
I  imagined  I  had  gone  over  pretty  much  the  whole  list. 

"  Why,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  your  mechanics  and 
day  laborers,  your  iron  -  moulders  and  glass  -  blowers, 
your  miners  and  farmers,  your  printers  and  mill-opera- 
tives, your  trainmen  and  quarry-hands.  Or  do  they 
prefer  to  go  to  resorts  of  their  own  ?" 


Ill 


It  was  not  easy  to  make  sure  of  such  innocence  as 
prompted  this  inquiry  of  my  Altrurian  friend.  The 
douht  whether  he  could  really  be  in  earnest  was  some- 
thing that  I  had  already  felt;  and  it  was  destined  to 
beset  me,  as  it  did  now,  again  and  again.  My  first 
thought  was  that,  of  course,  he  was  trying  a  bit  of 
cheap  irony  on  me,  a  mixture  of  the  feeble  sarcasm 
and  false  sentiment  that  makes  us  smile  when  we  find 
it  in  the  philippics  of  the  industrial  agitators.  For  a 
moment  I  did  not  know  but  I  had  fallen  victim  to  a 
walking  delegate  on  his  vacation,  who  was  employing 
his  summer  leisure  in  going  about  the  country  in  the 
guise  of  a  traveler  from  Altruria,  and  foisting  himself 
upon  people  who  would  have  had  nothing  to  do  with 
him  in  his  real  character.  But  in  another  moment  I 
perceived  that  this  was  impossible.  I  could  not  suppose 
that  the  friend  who  had  introduced  him  to  me  would 
be  capable  of  seconding  so  poor  a  joke,  and,  besides,  I 
could  not  imagine  why  a  walking  delegate  should  wish 
to  address  his  clumsy  satire  to  me  particularly.  For 
the  present,  at  least,  there  was  nothing  for  it  but  to 
deal  with  this  inquiry  as  if  it  were  made  in  good  faith 
and  in  the  pursuit  of  useful  information.  It  struck 
me  as  grotesque;  but  it  would  not  have  been  decent  to 
treat  it  as  if  it  were  so.  I  was  obliged  to  regard  it 
seriously,  and  so  I  decided  to  shirk  it. 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  that  opens  up  rather  a  large  field, 

which  lies  somewhat  outside  of  the  province  of  my  own 

32 


A  TEAVELEE  FROM  ALTEUEIA 

activities.  You  know,  I  am  a  writer  of  romantic  fiction, 
and  my  time  is  so  fully  occupied  in  manipulating  the 
destinies  of  the  good  old-fashioned  hero  and  heroine, 
and  trying  always  to  make  them  end  in  a  happy  mar- 
riage, that  I  have  hardly  had  a  chance  to  look  much 
into  the  lives  of  agriculturists  or  artisans ;  and,  to  tell 
you  the  truth,  I  don't  know  what  they  do  with  their 
leisure.  I'm  pretty  certain,  though,  you  won't  meet 
any  of  them  in  this  hotel;  they  couldn't  afford  it,  and 
I  fancy  they  would  find  themselves  out  of  their  element 
among  our  guests.  We  respect  them  thoroughly ;  every 
American  does,  and  we  know  that  the  prosperity  of  the 
country  rests  with  them ;  we  have  a  theory  that  they  are 
politically  sovereign,  but  we  see  very  little  of  them,  and 
we  don't  associate  with  them.  In  fact,  our  cultivated 
people  have  so  little  interest  in  them  socially  that  they 
don't  like  to  meet  them,  even  in  fiction;  they  prefer 
refined  and  polished  ladies  and  gentlemen,  whom  they 
can  have  some  sympathy  with;  and  I  always  go  to  the 
upper  classes  for  my  types.  It  won't  do  to  suppose, 
though,  that  we  are  indifferent  to  the  working  classes 
in  their  place.  Their  condition  is  being  studied  a  good 
deal  just  now,  and  there  are  several  persons  here  who 
will  be  able  to  satisfy  your  curiosity  on  the  points  you 
have  made,  I  think.     I  will  introduce  you  to  them." 

The  Altrurian  did  not  try  to  detain  me  this  time. 
He  said  he  should  be  very  glad  indeed  to  meet  my 
friends,  and  I  led  the  way  toward  a  little  group  at  the 
corner  of  the  piazza.  They  were  men  whom  I  partic- 
ularly liked,  for  one  reason  or  another;  they  were  in- 
telligent and  open-minded,  and  they  were  thoroughly 
American.  One  was  a  banker ;  another  was  a  minister ; 
there  was  a  lawyer,  and  there  was  a  doctor ;  there  was 
a  professor  of  political  economy  in  one  of  our  colleges ; 
and  there  was  a  retired  manufacturer — I  do  not  know 

33 


A    T II AVELEK    FROM    ALTRURIA 

what  he  used  to  manufacture :  cotton  or  iron,  or  some- 
thing like  that.  They  all  rose  politely  as  I  came  up 
with  my  Altrurian,  and  I  fancied  in  them  a  sensation 
of  expectancy  created  by  the  rumor  of  his  eccentric 
behavior  which  must  have  spread  through  the  hotel. 
But  they  controlled  this  if  they  had  it,  and  I  could  see, 
as  the  light  fell  upon  his  face  from  a  spray  of  electrics 
on  the  nearest  pillar,  that  sort  of  liking  kindle  in  theirs 
which  I  had  felt  myself  at  first  sight  of  him. 

I  said,  "  Gentlemen,  I  wish  to  introduce  my  friend, 
Mr,  Homos,"  and  then  I  presented  them  severally  to 
him  by  name.  We  all  sat  down,  and  I  explained :  "  Mr. 
Homos  is  from  Altruria.  He  is  visiting  our  country 
for  the  first  time,  and  is  greatly  interested  in  the  work- 
ing of  our  institutions.  He  has  been  asking  me  some 
rather  hard  questions  about  certain  phases  of  our  civili- 
zation; and  the  fact  is  that  I  have  launched  him  upon 
you  because  I  don't  feel  quite  able  to  cope  with  him." 

They  all  laughed  civilly  at  this  sally  of  mine,  but 
the  professor  asked,  with  a  sarcasm  that  I  thought  I 
hardly  merited,  "  What  point  in  our  polity  can  be  ob- 
scure to  the  author  of  '  Glove  and  Gauntlet '  and  '  Airs 
and  Graces  '  ?" 

They  all  laughed  again,  not  so  civilly,  I  felt,  and  then 
the  banker  asked  my  friend :  "  Is  it  long  since  you  left 
Altruria  ?" 

"  It  seems  a  great  while  ago,"  the  Altrurian  an- 
swered, "but  it  is  really  only  a  few  weeks." 

"  You  came  by  way  of  England,  I  suppose  ?" 

"Yes;  there  is  no  direct  line  to  America,"  said  the 
Altrurian. 

"  That  seems  rather  odd,"  I  ventured,  with  some 
patriotic  grudge. 

"  Oh,  the  English  have  direct  lines  everywhere,"  the 
banker  instructed  me. 

34 


A    TEAVELEE    FROM    ALTETJEIA 

"  The  tariff  has  killed  our  shipbuilding,"  said  the 
professor.  No  one  took  up  this  firebrand,  and  the  pro- 
fessor added :  "  Your  name  is  Greek,  isn't  it,  Mr. 
Homos  ?" 

"  Yes ;  we  are  of  one  of  the  early  Hellenic  families," 
said  the  Altrurian. 

"  And  do  you  think,"  asked  the  lawyer,  who,  like 
most  lawyers,  was  a  lover  of  romance,  and  was  well 
read  in  legendary  lore  especially,  "  that  there  is  any 
reason  for  supposing  that  Altruria  is  identical  with 
the  fabled  Atlantis  ?" 

"  No,  I  can't  say  that  I  do.  We  have  no  traditions 
of  a  submergence  of  the  continent,  and  there  are  only 
the  usual  evidences  of  a  glacial  epoch  which  you  find 
everywhere  to  support  such  a  theory.  Besides,  our 
civilization  is  strictly  Christian,  and  dates  back  to  no 
earlier  period  than  that  of  the  first  Christian  commune 
after  Christ.  It  is  a  matter  of  history  with  us  that  one 
of  these  communists,  when  they  were  dispersed,  brought 
the  Gospel  to  our  continent ;  he  was  cast  away  on  our 
eastern  coast  on  his  way  to  Britain." 

"  Yes,  we  know  that,"  the  minister  intervened,  "  but 
it  is  perfectly  astonishing  that  an  island  so  large  as 
Altruria  should  have  been  lost  to  the  knowledge  of  the 
rest  of  the  world  ever  since  the  beginning  of  our  era. 
You  would  hardly  think  that  there  was  a  space  of  the 
ocean's  surface  a  mile  square  which  had  not  been  trav- 
ersed by  a  thousand  keels  since  Columbus  sailed  west- 
ward." 

"  No,  you  wouldn't.  And  I  wish,"  the  doctor  sug- 
gested in  his  turn,  "  that  Mr.  Homos  would  tell  us 
something  about  his  country,  instead  of  asking  us  about 
ours." 

"  Yes,"  I  coincided,  "  I'm  sure  we  should  all  find  it 

a  good  deal  easier.     At  least  I  should ;  but  I  brought 

35 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

our  friend  up  iu  the  hope  that  the  professor  would  like 
nothing  better  than  to  train  a  battery  of  hard  facts  upon 
a  i lc fenceless  stranger."  Since  the  professor  had  given 
me  that  little  stab,  I  was  rather  anxious  to  see  how  he 
would  handle  the  desire  for  information  in  the  Altru- 
rian  which  I  had  found  so  prickly. 

This  turned  the  laugh  on  the  professor,  and  he  pre- 
tended to  be  as  curious  about  Altruria  as  the  rest,  and 
said  he  would  rather  hear  of  it.  But  the  Altrurian 
said:  "I  hojDe  you  will  excuse  me.  Sometime  I  shall 
be  glad  to  talk  of  Altruria  as  long  as  you  like;  or,  if 
you  will  come  to  us,  I  shall  be  still  happier  to  show 
you  many  things  that  I  couldn't  make  you  understand 
at  a  distance.  But  I  am  in  America  to  learn,  not  to 
teach,  and  I  hope  you  will  have  patience  with  my  igno- 
rance. I  begin  to  be  afraid  that  it  is  so  great  as  to 
seem  a  little  incredible.  I  have  fancied  in  my  friend 
here,"  he  went  on,  with  a  smile  toward  me,  "  a  suspicion 
that  I  was  not  entirely  single  in  some  of  the  inquiries 
I  have  made,  but  that  I  had  some  ulterior  motive,  some 
wish  to  censure  or  satirize." 

"  Oh,  not  at  all,"  I  protested,  for  it  was  not  polite 
to  admit  a  conjecture  so  accurate.  "  We  are  so  well 
satisfied  with  our  condition  that  we  have  nothing  but 
pity  for  the  darkened  mind  of  the  foreigner,  though 
we  believe  in  it  fully :  we  are  used  to  the  English  tour- 
ist." 

My  friends  laughed,  and  the  Altrurian  continued : 
"  I  am  very  glad  to  hear  it,  for  I  feel  myself  at  a 
peculiar  disadvantage  among  you.  I  am  not  only  a 
foreigner,  but  I  am  so  alien  to  you  in  all  the  traditions 
and  habitudes  that  I  find  it  very  difficult  to  get  upon 
common  ground  with  you.  Of  course,  I  know  theo- 
retically what  you  are,  but  to  realize  it  practically  is 

another  thing.     I  had  read  so  much  about  America  and 

36 


A  TRAVELER  EROil  ALTRURIA 

understood  so  little  that  I  could  not  rest  without  com- 
ing to  see  for  myself.  Some  of  the  apparent  contra- 
dictions were  so  colossal — " 

"  We  have  everything  on  a  large  scale  here,"  said 
the  banker,  breaking  off  the  ash  of  his  cigar  with  the 
end  of  his  little  finger,  "  and  we  rather  pride  ourselves 
on  the  size  of  our  inconsistencies,  even.  I  know  some- 
thing of  the  state  of  things  in  Altruria,  and,  to  be  frank 
witli  you,  I  will  say  that  it  seems  to  me  preposterous. 
I  should  say  it  was  impossible,  if  it  were  not  an  ac- 
complished fact;  but  I  always  feel  bound  to  recognize 
the  thing  done.  You  have  hitched  your  wagon  to  a  star, 
and  you  have  made  the  star  go;  there  is  never  any 
trouble  with  wagons,  but  stars  are  not  easily  broken  to 
harness,  and  you  have  managed  to  get  yours  well  in 
hand.  As  I  said,  I  don't  believe  in  you,  but  I  respect 
you."  I  thought  this  charming,  myself;  perhaps  be- 
cause it  stated  my  own  mind  about  Altruria  so  exactly 
and  in  terms  so  just  and  generous. 

"  Pretty  good,"  said  the  doctor,  in  a  murmur  of  sat- 
isfaction, at  my  ear,  "  for  a  bloated  bond-holder." 

"  Yes,"  I  whispered  back,  "  I  wish  I  had  said  it. 
What  an  American  way  of  putting  it !  Emerson  would 
have  liked  it  himself.     After  all,  lie  was  our  prophet." 

"  He  must  have  thought  so  from  the  way  we  kept 
stoning  him,"  said  the  doctor,  with  a  soft  laugh. 

"'  Which  of  our  contradictions,"  asked  the  banker, 
in  the  same  tone  of  gentle  bonhomie,  "  has  given  you 
and  our  friend  pause  just  now?" 

The  Altrnrian  answered,   after  a  moment :  "  I  am 

not  sure  that  it  is  a  contradiction,  for  as  yet  I  have 

not  ascertained  the  facts  I  was  seeking.     Our  friend 

was  telling  me  of  the  great  change  that  had  taken  place 

in  regard  to  work,  and  the  increased  leisure  that  your 

professional  people  are  now  allowing  themselves ;  and 

37 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

I  was  asking  him  where  your  working-men  -pent  their 
leisure." 

lie  went  over  the  list  of  those  he  had  specified,  and 
I  hung  my  head  in  shame  and  pity;  it  really  had  such 
an  effect  of  mawkish  sentimentality.  But  my  friends 
received  it  in  the  best  possible  way.  They  did  not 
laugh;  they  heard  him  out,  and  then  they  quietly  de- 
ferred to  the  banker,  who  made  answer  for  us  all : 

"  Well,  I  can  be  almost  as  brief  as  the  historian  of 
Iceland  in  his  chapter  on  snakes :  those  people  have 
no  leisure  to  spend." 

"  Except  when  they  go  out  on  a  strike,"  said  the 
manufacturer,  with  a  certain  grim  humor  of  his  own ; 
I  never  heard  anything  more  dramatic  than  the  account 
he  once  gave  of  the  way  he  broke  up  a  labor  union.  "  I 
have  seen  a  good  many  of  them  at  leisure  then." 

"  Yes,"  the  doctor  chimed  in,  "  and  in  my  younger 
days,  when  I  necessarily  had  a  good  deal  of  charity 
practice,  I  used  to  find  them  at  leisure  when  they  were 
'  laid  off.'  It  always  struck  me  as  such  a  pretty  eu- 
phemism. It  seemed  to  minify  the  harm  of  the  thing 
so.  It  seemed  to  take  all  the  hunger  and  cold  and  sick- 
ness out  of  the  fact.  To  be  simply  '  laid  off '  was  so 
different  from  losing  your  work  and  having  to  face 
beggary  or  starvation." 

"  Those  people,"  said  the  professor,  "  never  put  any- 
thing by.  They  are  wasteful  and  improvident,  almost 
to  a  man ;  and  they  learn  nothing  by  experience,  though 
they  know  as  well  as  we  do  that  it  is  simply  a  question 
of  demand  and  supply,  and  that  the  day  of  overpro- 
duction is  sure  to  come,  when  their  work  must  stop 
unless  the  men  that  give  them  work  are  willing  to  lose 
money." 

"  And  I've  seen  them  lose  it,  sometimes,  rather  than 

shut  down,"  the  manufacturer  remarked ;  "  lose  it  hand 

38 


A  TKAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

over  hand,  to  keep  the  men  at  work;  and  then  as  soon 
as  the  tide  turned  the  men  would  strike  for  higher 
wages.  You  have  no  idea  of  the  ingratitude  of  those 
people."  He  said  this  toward  the  minister,  as  if  he 
did  not  wish  to  be  thought  hard ;  and,  in  fact,  he  was  a 
very  kindly  man. 

"Yes,"  replied  the  minister,  "that  is  one  of  the 
most  sinister  features  of  the  situation.  They  seem 
really  to  regard  their  employers  as  their  enemies.  I 
don't  know  how  it  will  end." 

"  I  know  how  it  would  end  if  I  had  my  way,"  said 
the  professor.  "  There  wouldn't  be  any  labor  unions, 
and  there  wouldn't  be  any  strikes." 

"  That  is  all  very  well,"  said  the  laAvyer,  from  that 
judicial  mind  which  I  always  liked  in  him,  "  as  far  as 
the  strikes  are  concerned,  but  I  don't  understand  that 
the  abolition  of  the  unions  would  affect  the  impersonal 
process  of  '  laying  off.'  The  law  of  demand  and  supply 
I  respect  as  much  as  any  one — it's  something  like  the 
constitution ;  but,  all  the  same,  I  should  object  extreme- 
ly to  have  my  income  stopped  by  it  every  now  and  then. 
I'm  probably  not  so  wasteful  as  a  working-man  gen- 
erally is;  still,  I  haven't  laid  by  enough  to  make  it  a 
matter  of  indifference  to  me  whether  my  income  went 
on  or  not.  Perhaps  the  professor  has."  The  professor 
did  not  say,  and  we  all  took  leave  to  laugh.  The  lawyer 
concluded :  "  I  don't  see  how  those  fellows  stand  it," 

"  They  don't,  all  of  them,"  said  the  doctor.  "  Or 
their  wives  and  children  don't.    Some  of  them  die." 

"  I  wonder,"  the  lawyer  pursued,  "  what  has  become 
of  the  good  old  American  fact  that  there  is  always  work 
for  those  who  are  willing  to  work  ?  I  notice  that  wher- 
ever five  thousand  men  strike  in  the  forenoon,  there  are 
five  thousand  men  to  take  their  places  in  the  afternoon 

— and  not  men  who  are  turning  their  hands  to  some- 

39 


A  TEAVELER  FEOM  ALTKUEIA 


thing-  new,  but  men  who  are  used  to  doing  the  very 
thing  the  strikers  have  done." 

"  That  is  one  of  the  things  that  teach  the  futility 
of  strikes,"  the  professor  made  haste  to  interpose,  as  if 
he  had  not  quite  liked  to  appear  averse  to  the  interests 
of  the  workman ;  no  one  likes  to  do  that.  "  If  there  wire 
anything  at  all  to  be  hoped  from  them,  it  would  be  an- 
other matter." 

"  Yes,  but  that  isn't  the  point,  quite,"  said  the  law- 
yer. 

"  By-the-way,  what  is  the  point  2"  I  asked,  with  my 
humorous  lightness. 

"  Why,  I  supposed,"  said  the  banker,  "  it  was  the 
question  how  the  working  classes  amused  their  elegant 
leisure.     But  it  seems  to  be  almost  anything  else." 

We  all  applauded  the  neat  touch,  but  the  Altrurian 
eagerly  entreated :  "  No,  no ;  never  mind  that  now. 
That  is  a  matter  of  comparatively  little  interest.  I 
would  so  much  rather  know  something  about  the  status 
of  the  working-man  among  you." 

"  Do  you  mean  his  political  status  %  It's  that  of 
every  other  citizen." 

"  I  don't  mean  that.  I  suppose  that  in  America  you 
have  learned,  as  we  have  in  Altruria,  that  equal  politi- 
cal rights  are  only  means  to  an  end,  and  as  an  end  have 
no  value  or  reality.  I  meant  the  economic  status  of  the 
working-man,  and  his  social  status." 

I  do  not  know  why  we  were  so  long  girding  up  our 
loins  to  meet  this  simple  question.  I  myself  could  not 
have  hopefully  undertaken  to  answer  it ;  but  the  others 
were  each  in  their  way  men  of  affairs,  and  practically 
acquainted  with  the  facts,  except  perhaps  the  professor ; 
but  he  had  devoted  a  great  deal  of  thought  to  them,  and 
ought  to  have  been  qualified  to  make  some  sort  of  re- 
sponse.    But  even  he  was  silent ;  and  I  had  a  vague 

40 


A  TRAVELEK  FROM  ALTEURIA 

feeling  that  they  were  all  somehow  reluctant  to  formu- 
late their  knowledge,  as  if  it  were  uncomfortable  or 
discreditable.  The  banker  continued  to  smoke  quietly 
on  for  a  moment;  then  he  suddenly  threw  his  cigar 
away. 

"  I  like  to  free  my  mind  of  cant,"  he  said,  with  a 
short  laugh,  "  when  I  can  afford  it,  and  I  propose  to 
cast  all  sorts  of  American  cant  out  of  it  in  answering 
your  question.  The  economic  status  of  the  working- 
man  among  us  is  essentially  the  same  as  that  of  the 
working-man  all  over  the  civilized  world.  You  will 
find  plenty  of  people  here,  especially  about  election 
time,  to  tell  you  differently,  but  they  will  not  be  telling 
you  the  truth,  though  a  great  many  of  them  think  they 
are.  In  fact,  I  suppose  most  Americans  honestly  be- 
lieve because  we  have  a  republican  form  of  government, 
and  manhood  suffrage,  and  so  on,  that  our  economic 
conditions  are  peculiar,  and  that  our  working-man  has 
a  status  higher  and  better  than  that  of  the  working-man 
anywhere  else.  But  he  has  nothing  of  the  kind.  His 
circumstances  are  better,  and  provisionally  his  wages 
are  higher,  but  it  is  only  a  question  of  years  or  decades 
when  his  circumstances  will  be  the  same  and  his  wages 
the  same  as  the  European  working-man's.  There  is 
nothing  in  our  conditions  to  prevent  this." 

"  Yes,  I  understood  from  our  friend  here,"  said  the 
Altrurian,  nodding  toward  me,  "  that  you  had  broken 
only  with  the  political  tradition  of  Europe  in  your 
Revolution ;  and  he  has  explained  to  me  that  you  do  not 
hold  all  kinds  of  labor  in  equal  esteem ;  but — " 

"  What  kind  of  labor  did  he  say  we  did  hold  in 
esteem  ?"  asked  the  banker. 

"  Why,   I  understood  him  to  say  that  if  America 

meant  anything  at  all  it  meant  the  honor  of  work,  but 

that  you  distinguished  and  did  not  honor  some  kinds  of 

41 


A  TBAVELEE  FROM  ALTRUEIA 

work  so  much  as  others;  for  instance,  domestic  service, 
or  personal  attendance  of  any  kind." 

The  banker  laughed  again.  "  Oh,  he  drew  the  line 
there,  did  he  ?  Well,  we  all  have  to  draw  the  line 
somewhere.  Our  friend  is  a  novelist,  and  I  will  tell 
you  in  strict  confidence  that  the  line  he  has  drawn  is 
imaginary.  We  don't  honor  any  kind  of  work  any 
more  than  any  other  people.  If  a  fellow  gets  up,  the 
papers  make  a  great  ado  over  his  having  been  a  wood- 
chopper  or  a  bobbin-boy,  or  something  of  that  kind, 
but  I  doubt  if  the  fellow  himself  likes  it ;  he  doesn't 
if  he's  got  any  sense.  The  rest  of  us  feel  that  it's  infra 
dig.,  and  hope  nobody  will  find  out  that  we  ever  worked 
with  our  hands  for  a  living.  I'll  go  further,"  said  the 
banker,  with  the  effect  of  whistling  prudence  down  the 
wind,  "  and  I  will  challenge  any  of  you  to  gainsay  me 
from  his  own  experience  or  observation.  How  does 
esteem  usually  express  itself  ?  When  we  wish  to  honor 
a  man,  what  do  we  do  ?" 

"  Ask  him  to  dinner,"  said  the  lawyer. 

"  Exactly.  We  offer  him  some  sort  of  social  recog- 
nition. Well,  as  soon  as  a  fellow  gets  up,  if  he  gets  up 
high  enough,  we  offer  him  some  sort  of  social  recog- 
nition ;  in  fact,  all  sorts ;  but  upon  condition  that  he 
has  left  off  working  with  his  hands  for  a  living.  We 
forgive  all  you  please  to  his  past  on  account  of  the 
present.  But  there  isn't  a  working-man,  I  venture  to 
say,  in  any  city  or  town,  or  even  large  village,  in  the 
whole  length  and  breadth  of  the  United  States  who  has 
any  social  recognition,  if  he  is  still  working  at  his 
trade.  I  don't  mean,  merely,  that  he  is  excluded  from 
rich  and  fashionable  society,  but  from  the  society  of  the 
average  educated  and  cultivated  people.  I'm  not  say- 
ing he  is  fit  for  it ;  but  I  don't  care  how  intelligent  and 
agreeable  he  might  be — and  some  of  them  are  astonish- 

42 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

ingly  intelligent,  and  so  agreeable  in  their  tone  of  mind 
and  their  original  way  of  looking  at  things  that  I  like 
nothing  better  than  to  talk  with  them — all  of  our  in- 
visible fences  are  up  against  him." 

The  minister  said:  "  I  wonder  if  that  sort  of  exclu- 
siveness  is  quite  natural  %  Children  seem  to  feel  no 
sort  of  social  difference  among  themselves." 

"  We  can  hardly  go  to  children  for  a  type  of  social 
order,"  the  professor  suggested. 

"  True,"  the  minister  meekly  admitted.  "  But  some- 
how there  is  a  protest  in  us  somewhere  against  these  ar- 
bitrary distinctions — something  that  questions  whether 
they  are  altogether  right.  We  know  that  they  must  be, 
and  always  have  been,  and  always  will  be,  and  yet — 
well,  I  will  confess  it — I  never  feel  at  peace  when  I 
face  them." 

"  Oh,"  said  the  banker,  "  if  you  come  to  the  question 
of  right  and  wrong,  that  is  another  matter.  I  don't 
say  it's  right.  I'm  not  discussing  that  question ;  though 
I'm  certainly  not  proposing  to  level  the  fences ;  I  should 
be  the  last  to  take  my  own  down.  I  say  simply  that 
you  are  no  more  likely  to  meet  a  working-man  in  Ameri- 
can society  than  you  are  to  meet  a  colored  man.  ISTow 
you  can  judge,"  he  ended,  turning  directly  to  the  Altru- 
rian,  "  how  much  we  honor  labor.  And  I  hope  I  have 
indirectly  satisfied  your  curiosity  as  to  the  social  status 
of  the  working-man  among  us." 

We  were  all  silent. 

Perhaps  the  others  were  occupied  like  myself  in  try- 
ing to  recall  some  instance  of  a  working-man  whom 
they  had  met  in  society,  and  perhaps  we  said  nothing 
because  we  all  failed. 

The  Altrurian  spoke  at  last. 

"  You  have  been  so  very  full  and  explicit  that  I  feel 
as  if  it  were  almost  unseemly  to  press  any  further  in- 

43 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

<  1 1 1  i  it  ;  but  I  should  very  much,  like  to  know  how  your 
working-men  bear  this  social  exclusion." 

"  I'm  sure  I  can't  say,"  returned  the  banker.  "  A 
man  does  not  care  much  to  get  into  society  until  he  has 
something  to  eat,  and  how  to  get  that  is  always  the  first 
question  with  the  working-man." 

"  But  you  wouldn't  like  it  yourself  ?" 

"  No,  certainly,  I  shouldn't  like  it  myself.  I 
shouldn't  complain  of  not  being  asked  to  people's 
houses,  and  the  working-men  don't ;  you  can't  do  that ; 
but  I  should  feel  it  an  incalculable  loss.  We  may  laugh 
at  the  emptiness  of  society,  or  pretend  to  be  sick  of  it, 
but  there  is  no  doubt  that  society  is  the  flower  of  civili- 
zation, and  to  be  shut  out  from  it  is  to  be  denied  the 
best  privilege  of  a  civilized  man.  There  are  society 
women — we  have  all  met  them — whose  graciousness 
and  refinement  of  presence  are  something  of  incom- 
parable value ;  it  is  more  than  a  liberal  education  to 
have  been  admitted  to  it,  but  it  is  as  inaccessible  to  the 
working  -  man  as  —  what  shall  I  say  ?  The  thing  is 
too  grotesquely  impossible  for  any  sort  of  comparison. 
Merely  to  conceive  of  its  possibility  is  something  that 
passes  a  joke ;  it  is  a  kind  of  offence." 

Again  we  were  silent. 

"  I  don't  know,"  the  banker  continued,  "  how  the 
notion  of  our  social  equality  originated,  but  I  think 
it  has  been  fostered  mainly  by  the  expectation  of 
foreigners,  who  argued  it  from  our  political  equality. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  it  never  existed,  except  in  our 
poorest  and  most  primitive  communities,  in  the  pioneer 
days  of  the  West  and  among  the  gold-hunters  of  Cali- 
fornia. It  was  not  dreamed  of  in  our  colonial  society, 
either  in  Virginia  or  Pennsylvania  or  !New  York  or 
Massachusetts;   and  the  fathers  of  the  republic,  who 

were   mostly   slave-holders,    were   practically   as    stiff- 

44 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

necked  aristocrats  as  any  people  of  their  day.  We 
have  not  a  political  aristocracy,  that  is  all ;  but  there  is 
as  absolute  a  division  between  the  orders  of  men,  and 
as  little  love,  in  this  country  as  in  any  country  on  the 
globe.  The  severance  of  the  man  who  works  for  his 
living  with  his  hands  from  the  man  who  does  not  work 
for  his  living  with  his  hands  is  so  complete,  and  ap- 
parently so  final,  that  nobody  even  imagines  anything 
else,  not  even  in  fiction.  Or,  how  is  that?"  he  asked, 
turning  to  me.  "  Do  you  fellows  still  put  the  intelli- 
gent, high-spirited,  handsome  young  artisan,  who  wins 
the  millionaire's  daughter,  into  your  books  ?  I  used 
sometimes  to  find  him  there.', 

"  You  might  still  find  him  in  the  fiction  of  the  weekly 
story-papers ;  but,"  I  was  obliged  to  own,  "  he  would 
not  go  down  with  my  readers.  Even  in  the  story-paper 
fiction  he  would  leave  off  working  as  soon  as  he  married 
the  millionaire's  daughter,  and  go  to  Europe,  or  he 
would  stay  here  and  become  a  social  leader,  but  he 
would  not  receive  working-men  in  his  gilded  halls." 

The  others  rewarded  my  humor  with  a  smile,  but  the 
banker  said :  "  Then  I  wonder  you  were  not  ashamed  of 
filling  our  friend  up  with  that  stuff  about  our  honoring 
some  kinds  of  labor.  It  is  true  that  we  don't  go  about 
openly  and  explicitly  despising  any  kind  of  honest  toil 
— people  don't  do  that  anywhere  now;  but  we  contemn 
it  in  terms  quite  as  unmistakable.  The  working-man 
acquiesces  as  completely  as  anybody  else.  He  does  not 
remain  a  working-man  a  moment  longer  that  he  can 
help ;  and  after  he  gets  up,  if  he  is  weak  enough  to  be 
proud  of  having  been  one,  it  is  because  he  feels  that  his 
low  origin  is  a  proof  of  his  prowess  in  rising  to  the  top 
against  unusual  odds.  I  don't  suppose  there  is  a  man 
in  the  whole  civilized  world — outside  of  Altrnria.  <>f 
course — who  is  proud  of  working  at   a  trade,  except 

4  4.3 


A  TRAVELER  FEOM  ALTRURIA 

the  shoemaker  Tolstoy,  and  is  a  count,  and  he  does 
not  make  very  good  shoes." 

\\Y  all  laughed  again:  those  shoes  of  Count  Tolstoy's 
are  always  such  an  infallible  joke. 

The  Altrurian,  however,  was  cocked  and  primed  with 
another  question ;  he  instantly  exploded  it :  "  But  are 
all  the  working-men  in  America  eager  to  rise  above 
their  condition  ?  Is  there  none  willing  to  remain  among 
the  mass  because  the  rest  could  not  rise  with  him,  and 
from  the  hope  of  yet  bringing  labor  to  honor  ?" 

The  banker  answered :  "I  never  heard  of  any.  !No, 
the  American  ideal  is  not  to  change  the  condi- 
tions for  all,  but  for  each  to  rise  above  the  rest  if 
he  can." 

"  Do  you  think  it  is  really  so  bad  as  that  ?"  asked  the 
minister,  timidly. 

The  banker  answered :  "  Bad  ?  Do  you  call  that  bad  ? 
I  thought  it  was  very  good.  But,  good  or  bad,  I  don't 
think  you'll  find  it  deniable,  if  you  look  into  the  facts. 
There  may  be  working-men  willing  to  remain  so  for 
other  working-men's  sake,  but  I  have  never  met  any — 
perhaps  because  the  working-man  never  goes  into  so- 
ciety." 

The  unfailing  question  of  the  Altrurian  broke  the  si- 
lence which  ensued :  "  Are  there  many  of  your  working- 
men  who  are  intelligent  and  agreeable — of  the  type  you 
mentioned  a  moment  since  ?" 

"  Perhaps,"  said  the  banker,  "  I  had  better  refer  you 
to  one  of  our  friends  here,  who  has  had  a  great  deal 
more  to  do  with  them  than  I  have.  He  is  a  manufact- 
urer, and  he  has  had  to  do  with  all  kinds  of  work- 
people." 

"  Yes,  for  my  sins,"  the  manufacturer  assented ;  and 

he  added :  "  They  are  often  confoundedly  intelligent, 

though  I  haven't  often  found   them   very   agreeable, 

46 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

either  in  their  tone  of  mind  or  their  original  way  of 
looking  at  things." 

The  banker  amiably  acknowledged  his  thrust,  and  the 
Altrurian  asked :  "  Ah,  they  are  opposed  to  your  own  ?" 

"  Well,  we  have  the  same  trouble  here  that  you  must 
have  heard  of  in  England.  As  you  know  now  that  the 
conditions  are  the  same  here,  you  won't  be  surprised  at 
the  fact." 

"  But  the  conditions,"  the  Altrurian  pursued — "  do 
you  expect  them  always  to  continue  the  same  ?" 

"  Well,  I  don't  know,"  said  the  manufacturer. 
"  We  can't  expect  them  to  change  of  themselves,  and 
I  shouldn't  know  how  to  change  them.  It  was  ex- 
pected that  the  rise  of  the  trusts  and  the  syndicates 
would  break  the  unions,  but  somehow  they  haven't. 
The  situation  remains  the  same.  The  unions  are  not 
cutting  one  another's  throats  now  any  more  than  we 
are.     The  war  is  on  a  larger  scale — that's  all." 

"  Then  let  me  see,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  whether  I 
clearly  understand  the  situation  as  regards  the  work- 
ing-man in  America.  He  is  dependent  upon  the  em- 
ployer for  his  chance  to  earn  a  living,  and  he  is  never 
sure  of  this.  He  may  be  thrown  out  of  work  by  his 
employer's  disfavor  or  disaster,  and  his  willingness  to 
work  goes  for  nothing;  there  is  no  public  provision  of 
work  for  him ;  there  is  nothing  to  keep  him  from  want 
nor  the  prospect  of  anything." 

"  We  are  all  in  the  same  boat,"  said  the  professor. 

"  But  some  of  us  have  provisioned  ourselves  rather 
better  and  can  generally  weather  it  through  till  we  are 
picked  up,"  the  lawyer  put  in. 

"  I  am  always  saying  the  working-man  is  improvi- 
dent," returned  the  professor. 

"  There  are  the  charities,"  the  minister  suggested. 

"  But  his  economical  status,"  the  Altrurian  pursued, 

47 


A  TKAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  is  in  a  state  of  perpetual  uncertainty,  and  to  save 
himself  in  some  measure  he  has  organized,  and  so  has 
constituted  himself  a  danger  to  the  public  peace  ?" 

"  A  very  great  danger,"  said  the  professor. 

"  I  guess  we  can  manage  him,"  the  manufacturer  re- 
marked. 

"  And  socially  he  is  non-existent  ?" 

The  Altrurian  turned  with  this  question  to  the  bank- 
er, who  said :  "  He  is  certainly  not  in  society." 

"  Then,"  said  my  guest,  "  if  the  working-man's  wages 
are  provisionally  so  much  better  here  than  in  Europe, 
why  should  they  be  discontented?  What  is  the  real 
cause  of  their  discontent  ?" 

I  have  always  been  suspicious,  in  the  company  of 
practical  men,  of  an  atmosphere  of  condescension  to 
men  of  my  calling,  if  nothing  worse.  I  fancy  they 
commonly  regard  artists  of  all  kinds  as  a  sort  of  harm- 
less eccentrics,  and  that  literary  people  they  look  upon 
as  something  droll,  as  weak  and  soft,  as  not  quite  right. 
I  believed  that  this  particular  group,  indeed,  was  rather 
abler  to  conceive  of  me  as  a  rational  person  than  most 
others,  but  I  knew  that  if  even  they  had  expected  me  to 
be  as  reasonable  as  themselves  they  would  not  have  been 
greatly  disappointed  if  I  were  not ;  and  it  seemed  to  me 
that  I  had  put  myself  wrong  with  them  in  imparting 
to  the  Altrurian  that  romantic  impression  that  we  hold 
labor  in  honor  here.  I  had  really  thought  so,  but  I 
could  not  say  so  now,  and  I  wished  to  retrieve  myself 
somehow.  I  wished  to  show  that  I  was  a  practical  man, 
too,  and  so  I  made  answer :  "  What  is  the  cause  of  the 
working-man's  discontent  ?  It  is  very  simple :  the  walk- 
ing delegate." 


IV 


I  suppose  I  could  not  have  fairly  claimed  any  great 
originality  for  my  notion  that  the  walking  delegate  was 
the  cause  of  the  labor  troubles :  he  is  regularly  assigned 
as  the  reason  of  a  strike  in  the  newspapers,  and  is  rep- 
robated for  his  evil  agency  by  the  editors,  who  do  not 
fail  to  read  the  working-men  many  solemn  lessons  and 
fervently  warn  them  against  him,  as  soon  as  the  strike 
begins  to  go  wrong — as  it  nearly  always  does.  I  un- 
derstand from  them  that  the  walking  delegate  is  an  ir- 
responsible tyrant,  who  emerges  from  the  mystery  that 
habitually  hides  him  and  from  time  to  time  orders  a 
strike  in  mere  rancor  of  spirit  and  plenitude  of  power, 
and  then  leaves  the  working-men  and  their  families  to 
suffer  the  consequences,  while  he  goes  off  somewhere 
and  rolls  in  the  lap  of  luxury,  careless  of  the  misery 
he  has  created.  Between  his  debauches  of  vicious  idle- 
ness and  his  accesses  of  baleful  activity  he  is  employed 
in  poisoning  the  mind  of  the  working-men  against  his 
real  interests  and  real  friends.  This  is  perfectly  easy, 
because  the  American  working-man,  though  singularly 
shrewd  and  sensible  in  other  respects,  is  the  victim  of 
an  unaccountable  obliquity  of  vision  which  keeps  him 
from  seeing  his  real  interests  and  real  friends — or,  at 
least,  from  knowing  them  when  he  sees  them. 

There  could  be  no  doubt,  I  thought,  in  the  mind  of 

any  resonable  person  that  the  walking  delegate  was  the 

source  of  the  discontent  among  our  proletariate,  and 

I  alleged  him  with  a  confidence  which  met  the  approval 

49 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

of  the  professor,  apparently,  for  he  nodded,  as  if  to 
say  that  I  had  hit  the  nail  on  the  head  this  time ;  and 
the  minister  seemed  to  be  freshly  impressed  with  a  no- 
tion that  could  not  be  new  to  him.  The  lawyer  and  the 
doctor  were  silent,  as  if  waiting  for  the  banker  to  speak 
again ;  but  he  was  silent,  too.  The  manufacturer,  to 
my  chagrin,  broke  into  a  laugh.  "  I'm  afraid,"  he  said, 
with  a  sardonic  levity  which  surprised  me,  "  you'll  have 
to  go  a  good  deal  deeper  than  the  walking  delegate. 
He's  a  symptom ;  he  isn't  the  disease.  The  thing  keeps 
on  and  on,  and  it  seems  to  be  always  about  wages ;  but 
it  isn't  about  wages  at  the  bottom.  Some  of  those  fel- 
lows know  it  and  some  of  them  don't,  but  the  real  dis- 
content is  with  the  whole  system,  with  the  nature  of 
things.  I  had  a  curious  revelation  on  that  point  the 
last  time  I  tried  to  deal  with  my  men  as  a  union.  They 
were  always  bothering  me  about  this  and  about  that, 
and  there  was  no  end  to  the  bickering.  I  yielded  point 
after  point,  but  it  didn't  make  any  difference.  It  seem- 
ed as  if  the  more  I  gave  the  more  they  asked.  At  last 
I  made  up  my  mind  to  try  to  get  at  the  real  inwardness 
of  the  matter,  and  I  didn't  wait  for  their  committee  to 
come  to  me — I  sent  for  their  leading  man,  and  said  I 
wanted  to  have  it  out  with  him.  He  wasn't  a  bad  fel- 
low, and  when  I  got  at  him,  man  to  man  that  way,  I 
found  he  had  sense,  and  he  had  ideas — it's  no  use  pre- 
tending those  fellows  are  fools;  he  had  thought  about 
his  side  of  the  question,  anyway.  I  said :  '  Now  what 
does  it  all  mean  ?  Do  you  want  the  earth,  or  don't  you  ? 
When  is  it  going  to  end  ?'  I  offered  him  something  to 
take,  but  he  said  he  didn't  drink,  and  we  compromised 
on  cigars.  i  JSTow  when  is  it  going  to  end  ?'  said  I,  and 
I  pressed  it  home,  and  wouldn't  let  him  fight  off  from 
the  point.     '  Do  you  mean  when  is  it  all  going  to  end  ?' 

said  he.    '  Yes,'  said  I,  l  all.    I'm  sick  of  it.    If  there's 

50 


A  TEAVELEE  FEOM  ALTEUEIA 

any  way  out  I'd  like  to  know  it.'  i  Well,'  said  be,  '  I'll 
tell  you,  if  you  want  to  know.  It's  all  going  to  end 
when  you  get  the  same  amount  of  money  for  the  same 
amount  of  work  as  we  do.'  " 

We  all  laughed  uproariously.  The  thing  was  de- 
liciously  comical ;  and  nothing,  I  thought,  attested  the 
Altrurian's  want  of  humor  like  his  failure  to  appreciate 
this  joke.  He  did  not  even  smile  in  asking:  "  And  what 
did  you  say  ?" 

"  Well,"  returned  the  manufacturer,  with  cosey  en- 
joyment, "  I  asked  him  if  the  men  would  take  the  con- 
cern and  run  it  themselves."  We  laughed  again;  this 
seemed  even  better  than  the  other  joke.  "  But  he  said, 
'  Xo ' ;  they  would  not  like  to  do  that.  And  then  I 
asked  him  just  what  they  would  like,  if  they  could  have 
their  own  way,  and  he  said  they  would  like  to  have  me 
run  the  business,  and  all  share  alike.  I  asked  him  what 
was  the  sense  of  that,  and  why,  if  I  could  do  something 
that  all  of  them  put  together  couldn't  do,  I  shouldn't  be 
paid  more  than  all  of  them  put  together;  and  he  said 
that  if  a  man  did  his  best  he  ought  to  be  paid  as  much 
as  the  best  man.  I  asked  him  if  that  was  the  principle 
their  union  was  founded  on,  and  he  said,  '  Yes,'  that  the 
very  meaning  of  their  union  was  the  protection  of  the 
weak  by  the  strong  and  the  equalization  of  earnings 
among  all  who  do  their  best." 

We  waited  for  the  manufacturer  to  go  on,  but  he 
made  a  dramatic  pause  at  this  point,  as  if  to  let  it  sink 
into  our  minds ;  and  he  did  not  speak  until  the  Altru- 
rian  prompted  him  with  the  question,  "  And  what  did 
you  finally  do  ?" 

"  I  saw  there  was  only  one  way  out  for  me,  and  I 
told  the  fellow  I  did  not  think  I  could  do  business  on 
that  principle.  We  parted  friends,  but  the  next  Satur- 
day I  locked  them  out  and  smashed  their  union.     They 

51 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

came  back,  most  of  them — they  had  to — but  I've  treated 
with  them  ever  since  '  as  individuals.'  " 

"  And  they're  much  better  off  in  your  hands  than 
they  were  in  the  union,"  said  the  professor. 

"  I  don't  know  about  that,"  said  the  manufacturer, 
"  but  I'm  sure  I  am." 

We  laughed  with  him,  all  but  the  minister,  whose 
mind  seemed  to  have  caught  upon  some  other  point,  and 
who  sat  absently  by. 

"  And  is  it  your  opinion,  from  what  you  know  of 
the  working-man  generally,  that  they  all  have  this  twist 
in  their  heads  ?"  the  professor  asked. 

"  They  have,  until  they  begin  to  rise.  Then  they 
get  rid  of  it  mighty  soon.  Let  a  man  save  something — 
enough  to  get  a  house  of  his  own,  and  take  a  boarder  or 
two,  and  perhaps  have  a  little  money  at  interest — and 
he  sees  the  matter  in  another  light." 

"  Do  you  think  he  sees  it  more  clearly  ?"  asked  the 
minister. 

"  He  sees  it  differently." 

"  What  do  you  think  ?"  the  minister  pursued,  turn- 
ing to  the  lawyer.  "  You  are  used  to  dealing  with  ques- 
tions of  justice — " 

"  Rather  more  with  questions  of  law,  I'm  afraid," 
the  other  returned,  pleasantly,  putting  his  feet  together 
before  him  and  looking  down  at  them  in  a  way  he  had. 
"  But,  still,  I  have  a  great  interest  in  questions  of 
justice,  and  I  confess  that  I  find  a  certain  wild  equity 
in  this  principle,  Avhich  I  see  nobody  could  do  business 
on.  It  strikes  me  as  idyllic — it's  a  touch  of  real  poetry 
in  the  rough-and-tumble  prose  of  our  economic  life." 

He  referred  this  to  me  as  something  I  might  appre- 
ciate in  my  quality  of  literary  man,  and  I  responded  in 
my  quality  of  practical  man:  "  There's  certainly  more 

rhyme  than  reason  in  it." 

52 


A  TEAVELEK  FROM  ALTRUKIA 

He  turned  again  to  the  minister : 

"  I  suppose  the  ideal  of  the  Christian  state  is  the 
family  ?" 

"  I  hope  so,"  said  the  minister,  with  the  gratitude 
that  I  have  seen  people  of  his  cloth  show  when  men  of 
the  world  conceded  premises  which  the  world  usually 
contests ;  it  has  seemed  to  me  pathetic. 

"  And  if  that  is  the  case,  why,  the  logic  of  the  pos- 
tulate is  that  the  prosperity  of  the  weakest  is  the  sacred 
charge  and  highest  happiness  of f  all  the  stronger.  But 
the  law  has  not  recognized  any  such  principle,  in  eco- 
nomics at  least,  and  if  the  labor  unions  are  based  upon 
it  they  are  outlaw,  so  far  as  any  hope  of  enforcing  it  is 
concerned ;  and  it  is  bad  for  men  to  feel  themselves  out- 
law. How  is  it,"  the  lawyer  continued,  turning  to  the 
Altrurian,  "  in  your  country  ?  We  can  see  no  issue 
here,  if  the  first  principle  of  organized  labor  antagonizes 
the  first  principle  of  business." 

"  But  I  don't  understand  precisely  yet  what  the  first 
principle  of  business  is,"  returned  my  guest. 

"  Ah,  that  raises  another  interesting  question,"  said 
the  lawyer.  "  Of  course,  every  business  man  solves 
the  problem  practically  according  to  his  temperament 
and  education,  and  I  suppose  that  on  first  thoughts 
every  business  man  would  answer  you  accordingly. 
But  perhaps  the  personal  equation  is  something  you 
wish  to  eliminate  from  the  definition." 

"  Yes,  of  course." 

"  Still,  I  would  rather  not  venture  upon  it  first," 
said  the  lawyer.  "  Professor,  what  should  you  say  was 
the  first  principle  of  business  ?" 

"  Buying  in  the  cheapest  market  and  selling  in  the 
dearest,"  the  professor  promptly  answered. 

"  We  will  pass  the  parson  and  the  doctor  and  the 

novelist  as  witnesses  of  no  value.     They  can't  possibly 

53 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

have  any  cognizance  of  the  first  principle  of  business; 
their  affair  is  to  look  after  the  souls  and  bodies  and 
fancies  of  other  people.  But  what  should  you  say  it 
was  i"  he  asked  the  banker. 

"  I  should  say  it  was  an  enlightened  conception  of 
one's  own  interests." 

"And  you?" 

The  manufacturer  had  no  hesitation  in  answering: 
"  The  good  of  Number  One,  first,  last,  and  all  the  time. 
There  may  be  a  difference  of  opinion  about  the  best 
way  to  get  at  it;  the  long  way  may  be  the  better,  or 
the  short  way;  the  direct  way  or  the  oblique  way,  or 
the  purely  selfish  way,  or  the  partly  selfish  way;  but 
if  you  ever  lose  sight  of  that  end  you  might  as  well 
shut  up  shop.  That  seems  to  be  the  first  law  of  nature, 
as  well  as  the  first  law  of  business." 

"  Ah,  we  mustn't  go  to  nature  for  our  morality,"  the 
minister  protested. 

"  We  were  not  talking  of  morality,"  said  the  manu- 
facturer ;  "  we  were  talking  of  business." 

This  brought  the  laugh  on  the  minister,  but  the 
lawyer  cut  it  short :  "  Well,  then,  I  don't  really  see 
why  the  trades-unions  are  not  as  business-like  as  the 
syndicates  in  their  dealings  with  all  those  outside  of 
themselves.  Within  themselves  they  practise  an  altru- 
ism of  the  highest  order,  but  it  is  a  tribal  altruism ;  it 
is  like  that  which  prompts  a  Sioux  to  share  his  last 
mouthful  with  a  starving  Sioux,  and  to  take  the  scalp 
of  a  starving  Apache.  How  is  it  with  your  trades- 
unions  in  Altruria  ?"  he  asked  my  friend. 

"  We  have  no  trades-unions  in  Altruria,"  he  began. 

"  Happy  Altruria  !"  cried  the  professor. 

"We  had  them  formerly,"  the  Altrurian  went  on, 

"  as  you  have  them  now.     They  claimed,  as  I  suppose 

yours  do,  that  they  were  forced  into  existence  by  the 

54 


A  TRAVELER  FEOM  ALTRUKIA 

necessities  of  the  case ;  that  without  union  the  working- 
man  was  unable  to  meet  the  capitalist  on  anything  like 
equal  terms,  or  to  withstand  his  encroachments  and  op- 
pressions. But  to  maintain  themselves  they  had  to  ex- 
tinguish industrial  liberty  among  the  working-men 
themselves,  and  they  had  to  practise  great  cruelties 
against  those  who  refused  to  join  them  or  who  rebelled 
against  them." 

"  They  simply  destroy  them  here,"  said  the  pro- 
fessor. 

"  Well,"  said  the  lawyer,  from  his  judicial  mind, 
"  the  great  syndicates  have  no  scruples  in  destroying  a 
capitalist  who  won't  come  into  them  or  who  tries  to  go 
out.  They  don't  club  him  or  stone  him,  but  they  under- 
sell him  and  freeze  him  out ;  they  don't  break  his  head, 
but  they  bankrupt  him.     The  principle  is  the  same." 

"  Don't  interrupt  Mr.  Homos,"  the  banker  entreated. 
"  I  am  very  curious  to  know  just  how  they  got  rid  of 
labor  unions  in  Altruria." 

"  We  had  syndicates,  too,  and  finally  we  had  the 
reductio  ad  absurdum — we  had  a  federation  of  labor 
unions  and  a  federation  of  syndicates,  that  divided  the 
nation  into  two  camps.  The  situation  was  not  only  im- 
possible, but  it  was  insupportably  ridiculous." 

I  ventured  to  say :  "  It  hasn't  become  quite  so  much 
of  a  joke  with  us  yet." 

"  Isn't  it  in  a  fair  way  to  become  so  ?"  asked  the  doc- 
tor ;  and  he  turned  to  the  lawyer :  "  What  should  you 
say  was  the  logic  of  events  among  us  for  the  last  ten 
or  twenty  years  ?" 

"  There's  nothing  so  capricious  as  the  logic  of  events. 
It's  like  a  woman's  reasoning — you  can't  tell  what  it's 
aimed  at,  or  where  it's  going  to  fetch  up ;  all  that  you 
can  do  is  to  keep  out  of  the  way  if  possible.  We  may 
come  to  some  such  condition  of  things  as  thev  have  in 

55 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

Altruria,  where  the  faith  of  the  whole  nation  is  pledged 
to  secure  every  citizen  in  the  pursuit  of  happiness;  or 
we  may  revert  to  some  former  condition,  and  the  master 
may  again  own  the  man;  or  we  may  hitch  and  joggle 
along  indefinitely,  as  we  are  doing  now." 

"  But  come,  now,"  said  the  banker,  while  he  laid  a 
caressing  touch  on  the  Altrurian's  shoulder,  "  you  don't 
mean  to  say  honestly  that  everybody  works  with  his 
hands  in  Altruria  ?" 

"  Yes,  certainly.  We  are  mindful,  as  a  whole  peo- 
ple, of  the  divine  law — { In  the  sweat  of  thy  brow  shalt 
thou  eat  bread.'  " 

"  But  the  capitalists  ?  I'm  anxious  about  Number 
One,  you  see." 

"  We  have  none." 

"  I  forgot,  of  course.  But  the  lawyers,  the  doctors, 
the  parsons,  the  novelists  ?" 

"  They  all  do  their  share  of  hand-work." 

The  lawyer  said :  "  That  seems  to  dispose  of  the  ques- 
tion of  the  working-man  in  society.  But  how  about 
your  minds  ?  When  do  you  cultivate  your  minds  ? 
When  do  the  ladies  of  Altruria  cultivate  their  minds, 
if  they  have  to  do  their  own  work,  as  I  suppose  they 
do  ?  Or  is  it  only  the  men  who  work,  if  they  happen 
to  be  the  husbands  and  fathers  of  the  upper  classes  ?" 

The  Altrurian  seemed  to  be  sensible  of  the  kindly 
scepticism  Avhich  persisted  in  our  reception  of  his  state- 
ments, after  all  we  had  read  of  Altruria.  He  smiled 
indulgently,  and  said  :  "  You  mustn't  imagine  that  work 
in  Altruria  is  the  same  as  it  is  here.  As  we  all  work, 
the  amount  that  each  one  need  do  is  very  little,  a  few 
hours  each  day  at  the  most,  so  that  every  man  and 
woman  has  abundant  leisure  and  perfect  spirits  for  the 
higher  pleasures  which  the  education  of  their  whole 
youth  has  fitted  them  to  enjoy.    If  you  can  understand 

56" 


A  TEAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

a  state  of  things  where  the  sciences  and  arts  and  letters 
are  cultivated  for  their  own  sake,  and  not  as  a  means 
of  livelihood — " 

"  No,"  said  the  lawyer,  smiling,  "  I'm  afraid  we 
can't  conceive  of  that.  We  consider  the  pinch  of  pov- 
erty the  highest  incentive  that  a  man  can  have.  If 
our  gifted  friend  here,"  he  said,  indicating  me,  "  were 
not  kept  like  a  toad  under  the  harrow,  with  his  nose 
on  the  grindstone,  and  the  poorhouse  staring  him  in 
the  face — " 

"  For  Heaven's  sake,"  I  cried  out,  "  don't  mix  your 
metaphors  so,  anyway !" 

"  If  it  were  not  for  that  and  all  the  other  hardships 
that  literary  men  undergo — 

"  '  Toil,  envy,  want,  the  patron  and  the  jail ' — 

his  novels  probably  wouldn't  be  worth  reading." 

"  Ah !"  said  the  Altrurian,  as  if  he  did  not  quite 
follow  this  joking ;  and,  to  tell  the  truth,  I  never  find 
the  personal  thing  in  very  good  taste.  "  You  will  un- 
derstand, then,  how  extremely  difficult  it  is  for  me  to 
imagine  a  condition  of  things  like  yours — although  I 
have  it  under  my  very  eyes — where  the  money  consid- 
eration is  the  first  consideration." 

"  Oh,  excuse  me,"  urged  the  minister ;  "  I  don't  think 
that's  quite  the  case." 

"  I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  the  Altrurian,  sweetly ; 
"  you  can  see  how  easily  I  go  astray." 

"  Why,  I  don't  know,"  the  banker  interposed,  "  that 

you  are  so  far  out  in  what  you  say.     If  you  had  said 

that  money  was  always  the  first  motive,  I  should  have 

been  inclined  to  dispute  you,  too ;  but  when  you  say  that 

money  is  the  first  consideration,  I  think  you  are  quite 

right.     Unless  a  man  secures  his  financial  basis  for  his 

57 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

work,  he  can't  do  his  work.  It's  nonsense  to  pretend 
otherwise.  So  the  money  consideration  is  the  first  con- 
sideration. People  here  have  to  live  by  their  work,  and 
to  live  they  must  have  money.  Of  course,  we  all  recog- 
nize a  difference  in  the  qualities,  as  well  as  in  the  kinds, 
of  work.  The  work  of  the  laborer  may  be  roughly  de- 
fined as  the  necessity  of  his  life ;  the  work  of  the  busi- 
ness man  as  the  means,  and  the  wrork  of  the  artist  and 
scientist  as  the  end.  We  might  refine  upon  these  defini- 
tions and  make  them  closer,  but  they  will  serve  for 
illustration  as  they  are.  I  don't  think  there  can  be  any 
question  as  to  which  is  the  highest  kind  of  work ;  some 
truths  are  self-evident.  He  is  a  fortunate  man  whose 
work  is  an  end,  and  every  business  man  sees  this,  and 
owns  it  to  himself,  at  least  when  he  meets  some  man 
of  an  aesthetic  or  scientific  occupation.  He  knows  that 
this  luckier  fellow  has  a  joy  in  his  work  which  he  can 
never  feel  in  business;  that  his  success  in  it  can  never 
be  embittered  by  the  thought  that  it  is  the  failure  of 
another;  that  if  he  does  it  well,  it  is  pure  good;  that 
there  cannot  be  any  competition  in  it — there  can  be 
only  a  noble  emulation,  as  far  as  the  work  itself  is  con- 
cerned. He  can  always  look  up  to  his  work,  for  it  is 
something  above  him ;  and  a  business  man  often  has  to 
look  down  upon  his  business,  for  it  is  often  beneath 
him,  unless  he  is  a  pretty  low  fellow." 

I  listened  to  all  this  in  surprise ;  I  knew  that  the 
banker  was  a  cultivated  man,  a  man  of  university  train- 
ing, and  that  he  was  a  reader  and  a  thinker;  but  he 
had  always  kept  a  certain  reserve  in  his  talk,  which  he 
now  seemed  to  have  thrown  aside  for  the  sake  of  the 
Altrurian,  or  because  the  subject  had  a  charm  that 
lured  him  out  of  himself.  "  Well,  now,"  he  continued, 
"  the  question  is  of  the  money  consideration,  which  is 

the  first  consideration  with  us  all :  does  it,  or  doesn't  it 

58 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

degrade  the  work,  which  is  the  life,  of  those  among  us 
whose  work  is  the  highest  ?  I  understand  that  this  is 
the  misgiving  which  troubles  you  in  view  of  our  con- 
ditions ?" 

The  Altrurian  assented,  and  I  thought  it  a  proof  of 
the  banker's  innate  delicacy  that  he  did  not  refer  the 
matter,  so  far  as  it  concerned  the  aesthetic  life  and  work, 
to  me;  I  was  afraid  he  was  going  to  do  so.  But  he 
courteously  proposed  to  keep  the  question  impersonal, 
and  he  went  on  to  consider  it  himself:  "  Well,  I  don't 
suppose  any  one  can  satisfy  you  fully.  But  I  should 
say  that  it  put  such  men  under  a  double  strain,  and 
perhaps  that  is  the  reason  why  so  many  of  them  break 
down  in  a  calling  that  is  certainly  far  less  exhausting 
than  business.  On  one  side,  the  artist  is  kept  to  the 
level  of  the  working-man,  of  the  animal,  of  the  creature 
whose  sole  affair  is  to  get  something  to  eat  and  some- 
where to  sleep.  This  is  through  his  necessity.  On  the 
other  side,  he  is  exalted  to  the  height  of  beings  who 
have  no  concern  but  with  the  excellence  of  their  work, 
which  they  were  born  and  divinely  authorized  to  do. 
This  is  through  his  purpose.  Between  the  two,  I  should 
say  that  he  got  mixed,  and  that  his  work  shows  it." 

None  of  the  others  said  anything,  and,  since  I  had 
not  been  personally  appealed  to,  I  felt  the  freer  to 
speak.  "  If  you  will  suppose  me  to  be  speaking  from 
observation  rather  than  experience — "  I  began. 

"  By  all  means,"  said  the  banker,  "  go  on ;"  and  the 
rest  made  haste  in  various  forms  to  yield  me  the  word. 

"  I  should  say  that  such  a  man  certainly  got  mixed, 
but  that  his  work  kept  itself  pure  from  the  money  con- 
sideration, as  it  were,  in  spite  of  him.  A  painter  or 
actor,  or  even  a  novelist,  is  glad  to  get  all  he  can  for 
his  work,  and,  such  is  our  fallen  nature,  he  does  get  all 
he  knows  how  to  get :  but,  when  he  has  once  fairly  passed 

59 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

into  his  work,  he  loses  himself  in  it.  He  does  not  think 
whether  it  will  pay  or  not,  whether  it  will  be  popular 
or  not,  but  whether  he  can  make  it  good  or  not." 

"  Well,  that  is  conceivable,"  said  the  banker.  "  But 
wouldn't  he  rather  do  something  he  would  get  less  for, 
if  he  could  afford  it,  than  the  thing  he  knows  he  will 
get  more  for?  Doesn't  the  money  consideration  in- 
fluence his  choice  of  subject  ?" 

"  Oddly  enough,  I  don't  believe  it  does,  "  I  answered, 
after  a  moment's  reflection.  "  A  man  makes  his  choice 
once  for  all  when  he  embraces  the  aesthetic  life,  or, 
rather,  it  is  made  for  him ;  no  other  life  seems  pos- 
sible. 

I  know  there  is  a  general  belief  that  an  artist  does 
the  kind  of  thing  he  has  made  go  because  it  pays; 
but  this  only  shows  the  prevalence  of  business  ideals. 
If  he  did  not  love  to  do  the  thing  he  does,  he  could  not 
do  it  well,  no  matter  how  richly  it  paid." 

"  I  am  glad  to  hear  it,"  said  the  banker,  and  he  added 
to  the  Altrurian :  "  So,  you  see,  we  are  not  so  bad  as  one 
would  think.    We  are  illogically  better,  in  fact." 

"  Yes,"  the  other  assented.  "  I  knew  something  of 
your  literature  as  well  as  your  conditions  before  I  left 
home,  and  I  perceived  that  by  some  anomaly  the  one 
was  not  tainted  by  the  other.  It  is  a  miraculous  proof 
of  the  divine  mission  of  the  poet." 

"  And  the  popular  novelist,"  the  lawyer  whispered 
in  my  ear,  but  loud  enough  for  the  rest  to  hear,  and 
they  all  testified  their  amusement  at  my  cost. 

The  Altrurian,  with  his  weak  sense  of  humor,  passed 
the  joke.  "  Tt  shows  no  signs  of  corruption  from  greed, 
but  I  can't  help  thinking  that,  line  as  it  is,  it  might  have 
been  much  finer  if  the  authors  who  produced  it  had 
been  absolutely  freed  to  their  work,  and  had  never  felt 
the  spur  of  need." 

GO 


A  TRAVELER  EROM  ALTRURIA 

"  Are  they  absolutely  freed  to  it  in  Altruria  I"  asked 
the  professor.  "  I  understood  you  that  everybody  had 
to  work  for  his  living  in  Altruria." 

"  That  is  a  mistake.  Nobody  works  for  his  living 
in  Altruria ;  he  works  for  others'  living." 

"  Ah,  that  is  precisely  what  our  working-men  object 
to  doing  here,"  said  the  manufacturer.  "  In  that  last 
interview  of  mine  with  the  walking  delegate  he  had  the 
impudence  to  ask  me  why  my  men  should  work  for  my 
living  as  well  as  their  own." 

"  He  couldn't  imagine  that  you  were  giving  them 
the  work  to  do — the  very  means  of  life,"  said  the  pro- 
fessor. 

"  Oh  no,  that's  the  last  thing  those  fellows  want  to 
think  of." 

"  Perhaps,"  the  Altrurian  suggested,  "  they  might 
not  have  found  it  such  a  hardship  to  work  for  your 
living  if  their  own  had  been  assured,  as  it  is  with  us. 
If  you  will  excuse  my  saying  it,  we  should  think  it 
monstrous  in  Altruria  for  any  man  to  have  another's 
means  of  life  in  his  power;  and  in  our  condition  it  is 
hardly  imaginable.  Do  you  really  have  it  in  your 
power  to  take  away  a  man's  opportunity  to  earn  a  liv- 
ing?" 

The  manufacturer  laughed  uneasily.  "  It  is  in  my 
power  to  take  away  his  life;  but  I  don't  habitually 
shoot  my  fellow-men,  and  I  never  dismissed  a  man  yet 
without  good  reason." 

"  Oh,  I  beg  your  pardon,"  said  the  Altrurian.  "  I 
didn't  dream  of  accusing  you  of  such  inhumanity.  But, 
you  see,  our  whole  system  is  so  very  different  that,  as 
I  said,  it  is  hard  for  me  to  conceive  of  yours,  and  I  am 
very  curious  to  understand  its  workings.  If  you  shot 
your  fellow-man,  as  you  say,  the  law  would  punish  you ; 
but  if,  for  some  reason  that  you  decided  to  be  good,  you 

5  61 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURTA 

took  away  his  means  of  living,  and  he  actually  starved 
to  death—" 

"  Then  the  law  would  have  nothing  to  do  with  it," 
the  professor  replied  for  the  manufacturer,  who  did  not 
seem  ready  to  answer.  "  But  that  is  not  the  way  things 
fall  out.  The  man  would  be  supported  in  idleness, 
probably,  till  he  got  another  job,  by  his  union,  which 
would  take  the  matter  up." 

"  But  I  thought  that  our  friend  did  not  employ 
union  labor,"  returned  the  Altrurian. 

I  found  all  this  very  uncomfortable,  and  tried  to 
turn  the  talk  back  to  a  point  that  I  felt  curious  about : 
"  But  in  Altruria,  if  the  literary  class  is  not  exempt 
from  the  rule  of  manual  labor,  where  do  they  find  time 
and  strength  to  write  ?" 

"  Why,  you  must  realize  that  our  manual  labor  is 
never  engrossing  or  exhausting.  It  is  no  more  than  is 
necessary  to  keep  the  body  in  health.  I  do  not  see  how 
you  remain  well  here,  you  people  of  sedentary  occupa- 
tions." 

"  Oh,  we  all  take  some  sort  of  exercise.  We  walk 
several  hours  a  day,  or  we  row,  or  we  ride  a  bicycle,  or 
a  horse,  or  we  fence." 

"  But  to  us,"  returned  the  Altrurian,  with  a  growing 
frankness  which  nothing  but  the  sweetness  of  his  man- 
ner would  have  excused,  "  exercise  for  exercise  would 
appear  stupid.  The  barren  expenditure  of  force  that 
began  and  ended  in  itself,  and  produced  nothing,  we 
should— if  you  will  excuse  my  saying  so — look  upon 
as  childish,  if  not  insane  or  immoral." 


At  this  moment  the  lady  who  had  hailed  me  so  gay- 
ly  from  the  top  of  the  coach  while  I  stood  waiting  for 
the  Altrurian  to  help  the  porter  with  the  baggage,  just 
after  the  arrival  of  the  train,  came  up  with  her  husband 
to  our  little  group  and  said  to  me :  "  I  want  to  introduce 
my  husband  to  you.  lie  adores  your  books."  She  went 
on  much  longer  to  this  effect,  while  the  other  men  grin- 
ned round  and  her  husband  tried  to  look  as  if  it  were 
all  true,  and  her  eyes  wandered  to  the  Altrurian,  who 
listened  gravely.  I  knew  perfectly  well  that  she  .was 
using  her  husband's  zeal  for  my  fiction  to  make  me 
present  my  friend ;  but  I  did  not  mind  that,  and  I  in- 
troduced him  to  both  of  them.  She  took  possession  of 
him  at  once  and  began  walking  him  off  down  the  piazza, 
while  her  husband  remained  with  me,  and  the  members 
of  our  late  conference  drifted  apart.  I  was  not  sorry 
to  have  it  broken  up  for  the  present;  it  seemed  to  me 
that  it  had  lasted  quite  long  enough,  and  I  lighted  a 
cigar  with  the  husband,  and  we  strolled  together  in  the 
direction  his  wife  had  taken. 

He  began,  apparently  in  compliment  to  literature  in 
my  person :  "  Yes,  I  like  to  have  a  book  where  I  can  get 
at  it  when  we're  not  going  out  to  the  theatre,  and  I  want 
to  quiet  my  mind  down  after  business.  I  don't  care 
much  what  the  book  is ;  my  wife  reads  to  me  till  I  drop 
off,  and  then  she  finishes  the  book  herself  and  tells  me 
the  rest  of  the  story.  You  see,  business  takes  it  out  of 
you  so!     "Well,  I  let  my  wife  do  most  of  the  reading, 

63 


A  TRAVELER  PEOI  ALTEURIA 

anyway.  She  knows  pretty  much  everything  that's  go- 
ing in  that  line.  We  haven't  got  any  children,  and  it 
occupies  her  mind.  She's  lip  to  all  sorts  of  things — 
she's  artistic,  and  she's  musical,  and  she's  dramatic,  and 
she's  literary.  Well,  I  like  to  have  her.  Women  are 
funny,  anyway." 

He  was  a  good-looking,  good-natured,  average  Ameri- 
can of  the  money-making  type;  I  believe  he  was  some 
sort  of  a  broker,  but  I  do  not  quite  know  what  his  busi- 
ness was.  As  we  walked  up  and  down  the  piazza,  keep- 
ing a  discreet  little  distance  from  the  corner  where  his 
wife  had  run  off  to  with  her  capture,  he  said  he  wished 
he  could  get  more  time  with  her  in  the  summer — but  he 
supposed  I  knew  what  business  was.  He  was  glad  she 
could  have  the  rest,  anyway ;  she  needed  it. 

"  By-the-way,"  he  asked,  "  who  is  this  friend  of 
yours  ?  The  women  are  all  crazy  about  him,  and  it's 
been  an  even  thing  between  my  wife  and  Miss  Ground- 
sel which  would  fetch  him  first.  But  I'll  bet  on  my 
wife  every  time,  when  it  comes  to  a  thing  like  that. 
He's  a  good-looking  fellow — some  kind  of  foreigner,  I 
believe ;  pretty  eccentric,  too,  I  guess.  Where  is  Altru- 
ria,  anyway  ?" 

I  told  him,  and  he  said :  u  Oh  yes.  Well,  if  we  are 
going  to  restrict  immigration,  I  suppose  we  sha'n't  see 
many  more  Altrurians,  and  we'd  better  make  the  most 
of  this  one.    Heigh  ?" 

I  do  not  know  why  this  innocent  pleasantry  piqued 
me  to  say :  "  If  I  understand  the  Altrurians,  my  dear 
fellow,  nothing  could  induce  them  to  emigrate  to  Amer- 
ica. As  far  as  I  can  make  out,  they  would  regard  it 
very  much  as  we  should  regard  settling  among  the  Es- 
kimos." 

"  Is  that  so  ?"  asked  my  new  acquaintance,  with  per- 
fect good  temper.    "  Why  ?" 

64 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTKUKIA 

"  Really,  I  can't  say,  and  I  don't  know  that  I've  ex- 
plicit authority  for  my  statement." 

"  They  are  worse  than  the  English  used  to  be,"  he 
went  on.  "  I  didn't  know  that  there  were  any  for- 
eigners who  looked  at  us  in  that  light  now.  I  thought 
the  war  settled  all  that." 

I  sighed.  "  There  are  a  good  many  things  that  the 
war  didn't  settle  so  definitely  as  we've  been  used  to 
thinking,  I'm  afraid.  But,  for  that  matter,  I  fancy  an 
Altrurian  would  regard  the  English  as  a  little  lower  in 
the  scale  of  savagery  than  ourselves  even." 

"  Is  that  so  ?  Well,  that's  pretty  good  on  the  Eng- 
lish, anyway,"  said  my  companion,  and  he  laughed  with 
an  easy  satisfaction  that  I  envied  him. 

"  My  dear !"  his  wife  called  to  him  from  where  she 
was  sitting  with  the  Altrurian,  "  I  wish  you  would  go 
for  my  shawl.    I  begin  to  feel  the  air  a  little." 

"  I'll  go  if  you'll  tell  me  where,"  he  said,  and  he 
confided  to  me,  "  Never  knows  where  her  shawl  is  one- 
quarter  of  the  time." 

"  Well,  I  think  I  left  it  in  the  office  somewhere.  You 
might  ask  at  the  desk;  or  perhaps  it's  in  the  rack  by 
the  dining-room  door — or  maybe  up  in  our  room." 

"  I  thought  so,"  said  her  husband,  with  another 
glance  at  me,  as  if  it  were  the  greatest  fun  in  the 
world,  and  he  started  amiably  off. 

I  went  and  took  a  chair  by  the  lady  and  the  Altru- 
rian, and  she  began  at  once:  "  Oh,  I'm  so  glad  you've 
come!  I  have  been  trying  to  enlighten  Mr.  Homos 
about  some  of  the  little  social  peculiarities  among  us 
that  he  finds  so  hard  to  understand.  He  was  just  now," 
the  lady  continued,  "  wanting  to  know  why  all  the  na- 
tives out  here  were  not  invited  to  go  in  and  join  our 
young  people  in  the  dance,  and  I've  been  trying  to  tell 

him  that  we  consider  it  a  great  favor  to  let  them  come 

(55 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

and  take  up  so  much  of  the  piazza  and  look  in  at  the 
windows." 

She  gave  a  little  laugh  of  superiority,  and  twitched 
her  pretty  head  in  the  direction  of  the  young  country 
girls  and  country  fellows  who  were  thronging  the  place 
that  night  in  rather  unusual  numbers.  They  were  well 
enough  looking,  and,  as  it  was  Saturday  night,  they  were 
in  their  best.  I  suppose  their  dress  could  have  been 
criticised ;  the  young  fellows  were  clothed  by  the  ready- 
made  clothing-store,  and  the  young  girls  after  their  own 
devices  from  the  fashion  papers;  but  their  general  ef- 
fect was  good,  and  their  behavior  was  irreproachable; 
they  were  very  quiet — if  anything,  too  quiet.  They 
took  up  a  part  of  the  piazza  that  was  yielded  them  by 
common  usage,  and  sat  watching  the  hop  inside,  not  so 
much  enviously,  I  thought,  as  wistfully;  and  for  the 
first  time  it  struck  me  as  odd  that  they  should  have  no 
part  in  the  gayety.  I  had  often  seen  them  there  be- 
fore, but  I  had  never  thought  it  strange  they  should  be 
shut  out.  It  had  always  seemed  quite  normal,  but  now, 
suddenly,  for  one  baleful  moment,  it  seemed  abnormal. 
I  suppose  it  was  the  talk  we  had  been  having  about  the 
working-men  in  society  which  caused  me  to  see  the 
thing  as  the  Altrurian  must  have  seen  it;  but  I  was, 
nevertheless,  vexed  with  him  for  having  asked  such  a 
question,  after  he  had  been  so  fully  instructed  upon  the 
point.  It  was  malicious  of  him,  or  it  was  stupid.  I 
hardened  my  heart,  and  answered:  "You  might  have 
told  him,  for  one  thing,  that  they  were  not  dancing  be- 
cause they  had  not  paid  the  piper." 

"  Then  the  money  consideration  enters  even  into  your 
social  pleasures  ?"  asked  the  Altrurian. 

"  Very  much.     Doesn't  it  with  you  ?" 

He  evaded  this  question,  as  he  evaded  all  straight- 
forward questions  concerning  his  country :  "  We  have 

G6 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

no  money  consideration,  you  know.  But  do  I  under- 
stand that  all  your  social  entertainments  are  paid  for 
by  the  guests  ?" 

"  Oh  no,  not  so  bad  as  that,  quite.  There  are  a 
great  many  that  the  host  pays  for.  Even  here,  in  a 
hotel,  the  host  furnishes  the  music  and  the  room  free 
to  the  guests  of  the  house." 

"  And  none  are  admitted  from  the  outside  ?" 

"  Oh  yes,  people  are  welcome  from  all  the  other  ho- 
tels and  boarding-houses  and  the  private  cottages.  The 
young  men  are  especially  welcome ;  there  are  not  enough 
young  men  in  the  hotel  to  go  round,  you  see."  In  fact, 
we  could  see  that  some  of  the  pretty  girls  within  were 
dancing  with  other  girls;  half-grown  boys  were  dan- 
gling from  the  waists  of  tall  young  ladies  and  waltzing 
on  tiptoe. 

"  Isn't  that  rather  droll  ?"  asked  the  Altrurian. 

"  It's  grotesque !"  I  said,  and  I  felt  ashamed  of  it. 
"  But  what  are  you  to  do  ?  The  young  men  are  hard 
at  work  in  the  cities,  as  many  as  can  get  work  there, 
and  the  rest  are  out  West,  growing  up  with  the  coun- 
try. There  are  twenty  young  girls  for  every  young 
man  at  all  the  summer  resorts  in  the  East." 

"  But  what  would  happen  if  these  young  farmers — I 
suppose  they  are  farmers — were  invited  in  to  take  part 
in  the  dance  ?"  asked  my  friend. 

"  But  that  is  impossible." 

«  Why  ?" 

"  Really,  Mrs.  Makely,  I  think  I  shall  have  to  give 
him  back  to  you,"  I  said. 

The  lady  laughed.  "  I  am  not  sure  that  I  want  him 
back." 

"Oh  yes,"  the  Altrurian  entreated,  with  unwonted 

perception  of  the  humor.     "  I  know  that  I  must  be  very 

trying  with  my  questions  ;  but  do  not  abandon  me  to  the 

67 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

solitude  of  my  own  conjectures.  They  are  dread- 
ful!" 

"  Well,  I  won't/'  said  the  lady,  with  another  laugh. 
"  And  I  will  try  to  tell  }rou  what  would  happen  if  those 
farmers,  or  farm  -  hands,  or  whatever  they  are,  were 
asked  in.  The  mammas  would  be  very  indignant,  and 
the  young  ladies  would  be  scared,  and  nobody  would 
know  what  to  do,  and  the  dance  would  stop." 

"  Then  the  young  ladies  prefer  to  dance  with  one 
another  and  with  little  boys — " 

"  No,  they  prefer  to  dance  with  young  men  of  their 
own  station;  they  would  rather  not  dance  at  all  than 
dance  with  people  beneath  them.  I  don't  say  any- 
thing against  these  natives  here;  they  are  very  civil 
and  decent.  But  they  have  not  the  same  social  tradi- 
tions as  the  young  ladies ;  they  would  be  out  of  place 
with  them,  and  they  would  feel  it." 

"  Yes,  I  can  see  that  they  are  not  fit  to  associate  with 
them,"  said  the  Altrurian,  with  a  gleam  of  common- 
sense  that  surprised  me,  "  and  that  as  long  as  your  pres- 
ent conditions  endure  they  never  can  be.  You  must 
excuse  the  confusion  which  the  difference  between  your 
political  ideals  and  your  economic  ideals  constantly 
creates  in  me.  I  always  think  of  you  politically  first, 
and  realize  you  as  a  perfect  democracy ;  then  come  these 
other  facts,  in  which  I  cannot  perceive  that  you  differ 
from  the  aristocratic  countries  of  Europe  in  theory  or 
practice.  It  is  very  puzzling.  Am  I  right  in  supposing 
that  the  effect  of  your  economy  is  to  establish  insuper- 
able inequalities  among  you,  and  to  forbid  the  hope  of 
the  brotherhood  which  your  policy  proclaims  V 

Mrs.  Makely  looked  at  me  as  if  she  were  helpless  to 
grapple  with  his  meaning,  and,  for  fear  of  worse,  I 
thought  best  to  evade  it.  T  said :  "  I  don't  believe  that 
anybody  is  troubled  by  those  distinctions.     We  are  used 

68 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

to  them,  and  everybody  acquiesces  in  them,  which  is  a 
proof  that  they  are  a  very  good  thing." 

Mrs.  Makely  now  came  to  my  support.  "  The  Ameri- 
cans are  very  high-spirited,  in  every  class,  and  I  don't 
believe  one  of  those  nice  farm-boys  would  like  being- 
asked  in  any  better  than  the  young  ladies.  You  can't 
imagine  how  proud  some  of  them  are." 

"  So  that  they  suffer  from  being  excluded  as  in- 
feriors ?" 

"  Oh,  I  assure  you  they  don't  feel  themselves  in- 
ferior !  They  consider  themselves  as  good  as  anybody. 
There  are  some  very  interesting  characters  among  them. 
Now,  there  is  a  young  girl  sitting  at  the  first  window, 
with  her  profile  outlined  by  the  light,  whom  I  feel  it 
an  honor  to  speak  to.  That's  her  brother,  standing  there 
with  her — that  tall,  gaunt  young  man  with  a  Roman 
face ;  it's  such  a  common  type  here  in  the  mountains. 
Their  father  was  a  soldier,  and  he  distinguished  him- 
self so  in  one  of  the  last  battles  that  he  was  promoted. 
He  was  badly  wounded,  but  he  never  took  a  pension ; 
he  just  came  back  to  his  farm  and  worked  on  till  he 
died.  JSTow  the  son  has  the  farm,  and  he  and  his  sister 
live  there  with  their  mother.  The  daughter  takes  in 
sewing,  and  in  that  way  they  manage  to  make  both  ends 
meet.  The  girl  is  really  a  first-rate  seamstress,  and  so 
cheap !  T  give  her  a  good  deal  of  my  work  in  the  sum- 
mer, and  we  are  quite  friends.  She's  very  fond  of 
reading;  the  mother  is  an  invalid,  but  she  reads  aloud 
while  the  daughter  sews,  and  you've  no  idea  how  many 
books  they  get  through.  When  she  comes  for  sewing, 
T  like  to  talk  with  her  about  them;  I  always  have  her 
sit  down ;  it's  hard  to  realize  that  she  isn't  a  lady.  I'm 
a  good  deal  criticised,  I  know,  and  T  suppose  I  do  spoil 
her  a  little ;  it  puts  notions  into  such  people's  heads,  if 

you  meet  them  in  that  wav ;  they're  pretty  free  and  in- 

69 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

dependent  as  it  is.  Hut  when  I'm  with  Lizzie  I  for- 
get that  there  is  any  difference  between  us ;  I  can't  help 
loving  the  child.  You  must  take  Mr.  Homos  to  see 
them,  Mr.  Twelvemough.  They've  got  the  father's 
sword  hung  up  over  the  head  of  the  mother's  bed ; 
it's  very  touching.  But  the  poor  little  place  is  so 
bare!" 

Mrs.  Makely  sighed,  and  there  fell  a  little  pause, 
which  she  broke  with  a  question  she  had  the  effect  of 
having  kept  back. 

"  There  is  one  thing  I  should  like  to  ask  you,  too, 
Mr.  Homos.  Is  it  true  that  everybody  in  Altruria  does 
some  kind  of  manual  labor  ?" 

"  Why,  certainly,"  he  answered,  quite  as  if  he  had 
been  an  American. 

"  Ladies,  too  ?    Or  perhaps  you  have  none." 

I  thought  this  rather  offensive,  but  I  could  not  see 
that  the  Altrurian  had  taken  it  ill.  "  Perhaps  we  had 
better  try  to  understand  each  other  clearly  before  I 
answer  that  question.  You  have  no  titles  of  nobility  as 
they  have  in  England — " 

"  No,  indeed  !  I  hope  we  have  outgrown  those  super- 
stitions," said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  a  republican  fervor 
that  did  my  heart  good.  "  It  is  a  word  that  we  apply 
first  of  all  to  the  moral  qualities  of  a  person." 

"  But  you  said  just  now  that  you  sometimes  forgot 
that  your  seamstress  was  not  a  lady.  Just  what  did 
you  mean  by  that  ?" 

Mrs.  Makely  hesitated.  "I  meant — I  suppose  I 
meant — that  she  had  not  the  surroundings  of  a  lady; 
the  social  traditions." 

"  Then  it  has  something  to  do  with  social  as  w7ell  as 
moral  qualities — with  ranks  and  classes  ?" 

"  Classes,  yes ;  but,  as  you  know,  we  have  no  ranks 

in   America."      The   Altrurian   took   off   his   hat   and 

70 


A  TRAVELER  FEOM  ALTRURIA 

rubbed  an  imaginable  perspiration  from  his  forehead. 
He  sighed  deeply.     "  It  is  all  very  difficult." 

"  Yes,"  Mrs.  Makely  assented,  "  I  suppose  it  is.  All 
foreigners  find  it  so.  In  fact,  it  is  something  that  you 
have  to  live  into  the  notion  of;  it  can't  be  explained." 

"  Well,  then,  my  dear  madam,  will  you  tell  me  with- 
out further  question  what  you  understand  by  a  lady, 
and  let  me  live  into  the  notion  of  it  at  my  leisure  ?" 

"  I  will  do  my  best,"  said  Mrs.  Makely.  "  But  it 
would  be  so  much  easier  to  tell  you  who  was  or  who 
was  not  a  lady.  However,  your  acquaintance  is  so 
limited  yet  that  I  must  try  to  do  something  in  the  ab- 
stract and  impersonal  for  you.  In  the  first  place,  a 
lady  must  be  above  the  sordid  anxieties  in  every  way. 
She  need  not  be  very  rich,  but  she  must  have  enough,  so 
that  she  need  not  be  harassed  about  making  both  ends 
meet,  when  she  ought  to  be  devoting  herself  to  her  social 
duties.  The  time  is  past  with  us  when  a  lady  could 
look  after  the  dinner,  and  perhaps  cook  part  of  it  her- 
self, and  then  rush  in  to  receive  her  guests  and  do  the 
amenities.  She  must  have  a  certain  kind  of  house,  so 
that  her  entourage  won't  seem  cramped  and  mean,  and 
she  must  have  nice  frocks,  of  course,  and  plenty  of 
them.  She  needn't  be  of  the  smart  set ;  that  isn't  at  all 
necessary ;  but  she  can't  afford  to  be  out  of  the  fashion. 
Of  course,  she  must  have  a  certain  training.  She  must 
have  cultivated  tastes;  she  must  know  about  art  and 
literature  and  music,  and  all  those  kind  of  things,  and, 
though  it  isn't  necessary  to  go  in  for  anything  in  par- 
ticular, it  won't  hurt  her  to  have  a  fad  or  two.  The 
nicest  kind  of  fad  is  charity ;  and  people  go  in  for  that 
a  great  deal.  I  think  sometimes  they  use  it  to  work 
up  with,  and  there  are  some  who  use  religion  in  the 
same  way;  I  think  it's  horrid;  but  it's  perfectly  safe; 

you  can't  accuse  them  of  doing  it.     I'm  happy  to  say, 

71 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

though,  that  mere  church  association  doesn't  count  so- 
cially so  much  as  it  used  to.  Charity  is  a  great  deal 
more  insidious.  But  you  see  how  hard  it  is  to  define 
a  lady.  So  much  has  to  be  left  to  the  nerves,  in  all 
these  things.  And  then  it's  changing  all  the  time; 
Europe's  coming  in,  and  the  old  American  ideals  are 
passing  away.  Things  that  people  did  ten  years  ago 
would  be  impossible  now,  or  at  least  ridiculous.  You 
wouldn't  be  considered  vulgar,  quite,  but  you  would 
certainly  be  considered  a  back  number,  and  that's  al- 
most as  bad.  Really,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  "  I  don't  be- 
lieve I  can  tell  you  what  a  lady  is." 

We  all  laughed  together  at  her  frank  confession. 
The  Altrurian  asked :  "  But  do  I  understand  that  one 
of  her  conditions  is  that  she  shall  have  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  ?" 

"Nothing  to  do!"  cried  Mrs.  Makely.  "A  lady  is 
busy  from  morning  till  night.  She  always  goes  to  bed 
perfectly  worn  out." 

"  But  with  what  ?"  asked  the  Altrurian. 

"  With  making  herself  agreeable  and  her  house  at- 
tractive, with  going  to  lunches  and  teas  and  dinners  and 
concerts  and  theatres  and  art  exhibitions,  and  charity 
meetings  and  receptions,  and  with  writing  a  thousand 
and  one  notes  about  them,  and  accepting  and  declining, 
and  giving  lunches  and  dinners,  and  making  calls  and  re- 
ceiving them,  and  I  don't  know  what  all.  It's  the  most 
hideous  slavery !"  Her  voice  rose  into  something  like 
a  shriek ;  one  could  see  that  her  nerves  were  going  at  the 
mere  thought  of  it  all.  "  You  don't  have  a  moment  to 
yourself;  your  life  isn't  your  own." 

"  But  the  lady  isn't  allowed  to  do  any  useful  kind  of 
work  ?" 

"  Work!    Don't  you  call  all  that  work,  and  useful? 

I'm  sure  I  envy  the  cook  in  rav  kitchen  at  times ;  I  envy 

72  " 


A    TRAVELER    FROM    ALTRTJRIA 

the  woman  that  scrubs  my  floors.  Stop !  Don't  ask 
why  I  don't  go  into  my  kitchen,  or  get  down  on  my 
knees  with  the  mop.  It  isn't  possible.  You  simply 
can't.  Perhaps  you  could  if  you  were  very  gratide 
dame,  but  if  you're  anywhere  near  the  line  of  neces- 
sity, or  ever  have  been,  you  can't.  Besides,  if  we  did 
do  our  own  household  work,  as  I  understand  your  Altru- 
rian  ladies  do,  what  would  become  of  the  servant  class  ? 
We  should  be  taking  away  their  living,  and  that  would 
be  wicked." 

"  It  would  certainly  be  wrong  to  take  away  the  living 
of  a  fellow-creature,"  the  Altrurian  gravely  admitted, 
"and  I  see  the  obstacle  in  your  way." 

"  It's  a  mountain,"  said  the  lady,  with  exhaustion  in 
her  voice,  but  a  returning  amiability;  his  forbearance 
must  have  placated  her. 

"  May  I  ask  what  the  use  of  your  society  life  is  ?" 
he  ventured,  after  a  moment. 

"  Use  ?    Why  should  it  have  any  %    It  kills  time." 

"  Then  you  are  shut  up  to  a  hideous  slavery  without 
use,  except  to  kill  time,  and  you  cannot  escape  from 
it  without  taking  away  the  living  of  those  dependent  on 
you  ?" 

"  Yes,"  I  put  in,  "  and  that  is  a  difficulty  that  meets 
us  at  every  turn.  It  is  something  that  Matthew  Arnold 
urged  with  great  effect  in  his  paper  on  that  crank  of  a 
Tolstoy.  He  asked  what  would  become  of  the  people 
who  need  the  work  if  we  served  and  waited  on  ourselves, 
as  Tolstoy  preached.    The  question  is  unanswerable." 

"  That  is  true ;  in  your  conditions,  it  is  unanswer- 
able," said  the  Altrurian. 

"  I  think,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  "  that,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, we  do  pretty  well." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  presume  to  censure  you.     And  if  you 

believe  that  your  conditions  are  the  best — " 

73 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  We  believe  them  the  best  in  the  best  of  all  possible 
worlds,"  I  said,  devoutly;  and  it  struck  me  that,  if  ever 
we  came  to  have  a  national  church,  some  such  affirma- 
tion as  that  concerning  our  economical  conditions  ought 
to  be  in  the  confession  of  faith. 

The  Altrurian's  mind  had  not  followed  mine  so  far. 
"  And  your  young  girls,"  he  asked  of  Mrs.  Makely — 
"  how  is  their  time  occupied  ?" 

"  You  mean  after  they  come  out  in  society  ?" 

"  I  suppose  so." 

She  seemed  to  reflect.  "  I  don't  know  that  it  is  very 
differently  occupied.  Of  course,  they  have  their  own 
amusements;  they  have  their  dances,  and  little  clubs, 
and  their  sewing-societies.  I  suppose  that  even  an 
Altrurian  would  applaud  their  sewing  for  the  poor?" 
Mrs.  Makely  asked,  rather  satirically. 

"  Yes,"  he  answered ;  and  then  he  asked :  "  Isn't  it 
taking  work  away  from  some  needy  seamstress,  though  ? 
But  I  suppose  you  excuse  it  to  the  thoughtlessness  of 
youth." 

Mrs.  Makely  did  not  say,  and  he  went  on :  "  What  I 
find  it  so  hard  to  understand  is  how  you  ladies  can  en- 
dure a  life  of  mere  nervous  exertion,  such  as  you  have 
been  describing  to  me.    I  don't  see  how  you  keep  well." 

"We  don't  keep  well,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  the 
greatest  amusement.  "  I  don't  suppose  that  when  you 
get  above  the  working  classes,  till  you  reach  the  very 
rich,  you  would  find  a  perfectly  well  woman  in  Amer- 
ica." 

"  Isn't  that  rather  extreme  ?"  I  ventured  to  ask. 

"  ISTo,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  "  it's  shamefully  moder- 
ate," and  she  seemed  to  delight  in  having  made  out  such 
a  bad  case  for  her  sex.  You  can't  stop  a  woman  of  that 
kind  when  she  gets  started ;  I  had  better  left  it  alone. 

"  But,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  if  you  are  forbidden  by 

74 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTEURIA 

motives  of  humanity  from  doing  any  sort  of  manual 
labor,  which  you  must  leave  to  those  who  live  by  it,  I 
suppose  you  take  some  sort  of  exercise  ?" 

"  Well,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  shaking  her  head  gayly, 
"  we  prefer  to  take  medicine." 

"  You  must  approve  of  that,"  I  said  to  the  Altrurian, 
"  as  you  consider  exercise  for  its  own  sake  insane  or 
immoral.  But,  Mrs.  Makely,"  I  entreated,  "  you're  giv- 
ing me  away  at  a  tremendous  rate.  I  have  just  been 
telling  Mr.  Homos  that  you  ladies  go  in  for  athletics  so 
much  now  in  your  summer  outings  that  there  is  danger 
of  your  becoming  physically  as  well  as  intellectually 
superior  to  us  poor  fellows.  Don't  take  that  consolation 
from  me." 

"  I  won't,  altogether,"  she  said.  "  I  couldn't  have  the 
heart  to,  after  the  pretty  way  you've  put  it.  I  don't 
call  it  very  athletic,  sitting  around  on  hotel  piazzas  all 
summer  long,  as  nineteen-twentieths  of  us  do.  But  I 
don't  deny  that  there  is  a  Bemnant,  as  Matthew  Arnold 
calls  them,  who  do  go  in  for  tennis  and  boating  and 
bathing  and  tramping  and  climbing."  She  paused, 
and  then  she  concluded,  gleefully :  "  And  you  ought 
to  see  what  wrecks  they  get  home  in  the  fall !" 

The  joke  was  on  me;  I  could  not  help  laughing, 
though  I  felt  rather  sheepish  before  the  Altrurian. 
Fortunately,  he  did  not  pursue  the  inquiry;  his  curi- 
osity had  been  given  a  slant  aside  from  it. 

"  But  your  ladies,"  he  asked,  "  they  have  the  sum- 
mer for  rest,  however  they  use  it.  Do  they  generally 
leave  town  ?  I  understood  Mr.  Twelvemough  to  say 
so,"  he  added,  with  a  deferential  glance  at  me. 

"  Yes,  you  may  say  it  is  the  universal  custom  in  the 
class  that  can  afford  it,"  said  Mrs.  Makely.  She  pro- 
ceeded as  if  she  felt  a  tacit  censure  in  his  question. 

"  It  wouldn't  be  the  least  use  for  us  to  stay  and  fry 

75 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

through  our  summers  in  the  city  simply  because  our 
fathers  and  brothers  had  to.  Besides,  we  are  worn  out. 
at  the  end  of  the  season,  and  they  want  us  to  come  away 
as  much  as  we  want  to  come." 

"  Ah,  I  have  always  heard  that  the  Americans  are 
beautiful  in  their  attitude  toward  women." 

"  They  are  perfect  dears,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  "  and 
here  comes  one  of  the  best  of  them." 

At  that  moment  her  husband  came  up  and  laid  her 
shawl  across  her  shoulders.  "  Whose  character  is  it 
you're  blasting  ?"  he  asked,  jocosely. 

"  Where  in  the  world  did  you  find  it  ?"  she  asked, 
meaning  the  shawl. 

"  It  was  where  you  left  it — on  the  sofa,  in  the  side 
parlor.  I  had  to  take  my  life  in  my  hand  when  I 
crossed  among  all  those  waltzers  in  there.  There  must 
have  been  as  many  as  three  couples  on  the  floor.  Poor 
girls !  I  pity  them,  off  at  these  places.  The  fellows  in 
town  have  a  good  deal  better  time.  They've  got  their 
clubs,  and  they've  got  the  theatre,  and  when  the  weather 
gets  too  much  for  them  they  can  run  off  down  to  the 
shore  for  the  night.  The  places  anywhere  within  an 
hour's  ride  are  full  of  fellows.  The  girls  don't  have 
to  dance  with  one  another  there,  or  with  little  boys.  Of 
course,  that's  all  right  if  they  like  it  better."  He  laugh- 
ed at  his  wife,  and  winked  at  me,  and  smoked  swiftly, 
in  emphasis  of  his  irony. 

"  Then  the  young  gentlemen  whom  the  young  ladies 
here  usually  meet  in  society  are  all  at  work  in  the 
cities  ?"  the  Altrurian  asked  him,  rather  needlessly,  as 
I  had  already  said  so. 

"  Yes,  those  who  are  not  out  West,  growing  up 
with  the  country,  except,  of  course,  the  fellows  who 
have  inherited  a  fortune.  They're  mostly  off  on 
yachts." 

76 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  But  why  do  your  young  men  go  West  to  grow  up 
with  the  country  ?"  pursued  my  friend. 

"  Because  the  East  is  grown  up.  They  have  got  to 
hustle,  and  the  West  is  the  place  to  hustle.  To  make 
money,"  added  Makely,  in  response  to  a  puzzled  glance 
of  the  Altrurian. 

"  Sometimes,"  said  his  wife,  "  I  almost  hate  the  name 
of  money." 

"  Well,  so  long  as  you  don't  hate  the  thing,  Peggy." 

"  Oh,  we  must  have  it,  I  suppose,"  she  sighed. 
"  They  used  to  say  about  the  girls  who  grew  into  old 
maids  just  after  the  Rebellion  that  they  had  lost  their 
chance  in  the  war  for  the  Union.  I  think  quite  as  many 
lose  their  chance  now  in  the  war  for  the  dollar." 

"  Mars  hath  slain  his  thousands,  but  Mammon  hath 
slain  his  tens  of  thousands,"  I  suggested,  lightly;  we 
all  like  to  recognize  the  facts,  so  long  as  we  are  not 
expected  to  do  anything  about  them;  then,  we  deny 
them. 

"  Yes,  quite  as  bad  as  that,"  said  Mrs.  Makely. 

"  Well,  my  dear,  you  are  expensive,  you  know,"  said 
her  husband,  "  and  if  we  want  to  have  you — why,  we've 
got  to  hustle  first." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  blame  you,  you  poor  things !  There's 
nothing  to  be  done  about  it;  it's  just  got  to  go  on  and 
on ;  I  don't  see  how  it's  ever  to  end." 

The  Altrurian  had  been  following  us  with  that  air 
of  polite  mystification  which  I  had  begun  to  dread  in 
him.  "  Then,  in  your  good  society  you  postpone,  and 
even  forego,  the  happiness  of  life  in  the  struggle  to  be 
rich?" 

"  Well,  you  see,"  said  Makely,  "  a  fellow  don't  like 
to  ask  a  girl  to  share  a  home  that  isn't  as  nice  as  the 
home  she  has  left." 

"  Sometimes,"  his  wife  put  in,  rather  sadly,  "  I  think 
6  77 


A  TBAVELEE  FROM  ALTKURIA 

that  it's  all  a  mistake,  and  that  we'd  be  willing  to  share 
the  privations  of  the  man  we  loved." 

"  Well,"  said  Makely,  with  a  laugh,  "  we  wouldn't 
like  to  risk  it." 

I  laughed  with  him,  but  his  wife  did  not,  and  in  the 
silence  that  ensued  there  was  nothing  to  prevent  the 
Altrurian  from  coming  in  with  another  of  his  questions : 
"  How  far  does  this  state  of  things  extend  downward  ?" 
Does  it  include  the  working  classes,  too  ?" 

"  Oh  no !"  we  all  answered  together,  and  Mrs.  Make- 
ly  said :  "  With  your  Altrurian  ideas,  I  suppose  you 
would  naturally  sympathize  a  great  deal  more  with  the 
lower  classes,  and  think  they  had  to  endure  all  the 
hardshijos  in  our  system ;  but  if  you  could  realize  how 
the  struggle  goes  on  in  the  best  society,  and  how  we  all 
have  to  fight  for  what  we  get,  or  don't  get,  you  would 
be  disposed  to  pity  our  upper  classes,  too." 

"  I  am  sure  I  should,"  said  the  Altrurian. 

Makely  remarked :  "  I  used  to  hear  my  father  say 
that  slavery  was  harder  on  the  whites  than  it  was  on 
the  blacks,  and  that  he  wanted  it  done  away  with  for 
the  sake  of  the  masters." 

Makely  rather  faltered  in  conclusion,  as  if  he  were 
not  quite  satisfied  with  his  remark,  and  I  distinctly 
felt  a  want  of  proportion  in  it ;  but  I  did  not  wish  to 
say  anything.     His  wife  had  no  reluctance. 

"  Well,  there's  no  comparison  between  the  two  things, 
but  the  struggle  certainly  doesn't  affect  the  working 
classes  as  it  does  us.  They  go  on  marrying  and  giving 
in  marriage  in  the  old  way.  They  have  nothing  to  lose, 
and  so  they  can  afford  it," 

"  Blessed  am  dem  what  don't  expect  nuffin !  Oh,  I 
tell  you,  it's  a  working-man's  country,"  said  Makely, 
through  his  cigar-smoke.  "  You  ought  to  see  them  in 
town,  these  summer  nights,  in  the  parks  and  squares 

78 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

and  cheap  theatres.  Their  girls  are  not  off  for  their 
health,  anywhere,  and  their  fellows  are  not  off  grow- 
ing up  with  the  country.  Their  day's  work  is  over, 
and  they're  going  in  for  a  good  time.  And,  then,  walk 
through  the  streets  where  they  live,  and  see  them  out 
on  the  stoops  with  their  wives  and  children !  I  tell 
you,  it's  enough  to  make  a  fellow  wish  he  was  poor 
himself." 

"  Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  "  it's  astonishing  how 
strong  and  well  those  women  keep,  with  their  great 
families  and  their  hard  work.  Sometimes  I  really  envy 
them." 

"  Do  you  suppose,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  that  they 
are  aware  of  the  sacrifices  which  the  ladies  of  the  upper 
classes  make  in  leaving  all  the  work  to  them,  and  suf- 
fering from  the  nervous  debility  which  seems  to  be  the 
outcome  of  your  society  life  ?" 

"  They  have  not  the  remotest  idea  of  it.  They  have 
no  conception  of  what  a  society  woman  goes  through 
with.  They  think  we  do  nothing.  They  envy  us,  too, 
and  sometimes  they're  so  ungrateful  and  indifferent, 
if  you  try  to  help  them,  or  get  on  terms  with  them, 
that  I  believe  they  hate  us." 

"  But  that  comes  from  ignorance  ?" 

"  Yes,  though  I  don't  know  that  they  are  really  any 
more  ignorant  of  us  than  we  are  of  them.  It's  the 
other  half  on  both  sides." 

"  Isn't  that  a  pity,  rather  ?" 

"  Of  course  it's  a  pity,  but  what  can  you  do  ?  You 
can't  know  what  people  are  like  unless  you  live  like 
them,  and  then  the  question  is  whether  the  game  is 
worth  the  candle.  I  should  like  to  know  how  you  man- 
age in  Altruria." 

"  Why,  we  have  solved  the  problem  in  the  only  way, 

as  you  say,  that  it  can  be  solved.    We  all  live  alike." 

70 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  Isn't  that  a  little,  just  a  very  trifling  little  bit,  mo- 
notonous ?"  Mrs.  Makely  asked,  with  a  smile.  "  But 
there  is  everything,  of  course,  in  being  used  to  it.  To 
an  unregenerate  spirit  —  like  mine,  for  example  —  it 
seems  intolerable." 

"  But  why  ?  When  you  were  younger,  before  you 
were  married,  you  all  lived  at  home  together — or,  per- 
haps, you  were  an  only  child  ?" 

"  Oh,  no  indeed !     There  were  ten  of  us." 

"  Then  you  all  lived  alike,  and  shared  equally  ?" 

"  Yes,  but  we  were  a  family." 

"  We  do  not  conceive  of  the  human  race  except  as  a 
family." 

"  Now,  excuse  me,  Mr.  Homos,  that  is  all  nonsense. 
You  cannot  have  the  family  feeling  without  love,  and 
it  is  impossible  to  love  other  people.  That  talk  about 
the  neighbor,  and  all  that,  is  all  well  enough — "  She 
stopped  herself,  as  if  she  dimly  remembered  who  be- 
gan that  talk,  and  then  went  on :  "  Of  course,  I  accept 
it  as  a  matter  of  faith,  and  the  spirit  of  it,  nobody 
denies  that;  but  what  I  mean  is,  that  you  must  have 
frightful  quarrels  all  the  time."  She  tried  to  look  as 
if  this  were  where  she  really  meant  to  bring  up,  and  he 
took  her  on  the  ground  she  had  chosen. 

"  Yes,  we  have  quarrels.    Hadn't  you  at  home  ?" 

"  We  fought  like  little  cats  and  dogs,  at  times." 

Makely  and  I  burst  into  a  laugh  at  her  magnan- 
imous frankness.  The  Altrurian  remained  serious. 
"  But,  because  you  lived  alike,  you  knew  each  other, 
and  so  you  easily  made  up  your  quarrels.  It  is  quite 
as  simple  with  us,  in  our  life  as  a  human  family." 

This  notion  of  a  human  family  seemed  to  amuse 

Mrs.  Makely  more  and  more ;  she  laughed  and  laughed 

again.     "  You  must  excuse  me,"  she  panted,  at  last, 

"but  I  cannot  imagine  it!     ~No,  it  is  too  ludicrous. 

80 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

Just  fancy  the  jars  of  an  ordinary  family  multiplied 
by  the  population  of  a  whole  continent!  Why,  you 
must  be  in  a  perpetual  squabble.  You  can't  have  any 
peace  of  your  lives.  It's  worse,  far  worse,  than  our 
way." 

"  But,  madam,"  he  began,  "  you  are  supposing  our 
family  to  be  made  up  of  people  with  all  the  antagonistic 
interests  of  your  civilization.    As  a  matter  of  fact — " 

"  No,  no !  I  know  human  nature,  Mr.  Homos !"  She 
suddenly  jumped  up  and  gave  him  her  hand.  "Good- 
night," she  said,  sweetly,  and  as  she  drifted  off  on  her 
husband's  arm  she  looked  back  at  us  and  nodded  in 
gay  triumph. 

The  Altrurian  turned  upon  me  with  unabated  inter- 
est. "  And  have  you  no  provision  in  your  system  for 
finally  making  the  lower  classes  understand  the  suf- 
ferings and  sacrifices  of  the  upper  classes  in  their  be- 
half ?  Do  you  expect  to  do  nothing  to  bring  them  to- 
gether in  mutual  kindness  ?" 

"  Well,  not  this  evening,"  I  said,  throwing  the  end 
of  my  cigar  away.    "  I'm  going  to  bed — aren't  you  ?" 

"  Not  yet," 

"  Well,  good-night.  Are  you  sure  you  can  find  your 
room  ?" 

"  Oh  yes.     Good-night." 


VI 


I  left  my  guest  abruptly,  with  a  feeling  of  vexation 
not  very  easily  definable.  His  repetition  of  questions 
about  questions  which  society  has  so  often  answered, 
and  always  in  the  same  way,  was  not  so  bad  in  him 
as  it  would  have  been  in  a  person  of  our  civilization; 
he  represented  a  wholly  different  state  of  things,  the  in- 
version of  our  own,  and  much  could  be  forgiven  him 
for  that  reason,  just  as  in  Russia  much  could  be  for- 
given to  an  American  if  he  formulated  his  curiosity 
concerning  imperialism  from  a  purely  republican  ex- 
perience. I  knew  that  in  Altruria,  for  instance,  the 
possession  of  great  gifts,  of  any  kind  of  superiority, 
involved  the  sense  of  obligation  to  others,  and  the  wish 
to  identify  one's  self  with  the  great  mass  of  men,  rather 
than  the  ambition  to  distinguish  one's  self  from  them ; 
and  that  the  Altrurians  honored  their  gifted  men  in 
the  measure  they  did  this.  A  man  reared  in  such  a 
civilization  must  naturally  find  it  difficult  to  get  our 
point  of  view;  with  social  inclusion  as  the  ideal,  he 
would  with  difficulty  conceive  of  our  ideal  of  social  ex- 
clusion ;  but  I  think  we  had  all  been  very  patient  with 
him ;  we  should  have  made  short  work  with  an  Ameri- 
can who  had  approached  us  with  the  same  inquiries. 
Even  from  a  foreigner,  the  citizen  of  a  republic  founded 
on  the  notion,  elsewhere  exploded  ever  since  Cain,  that 
one  is  his  brother's  keeper,  the  things  he  asked  seemed 
inoffensive  only  because  they  were  puerile ;  but  they 

certainly  were  puerile.    I  felt  that  it  ought  to  have  been 

82 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

self-evident  to  him  that  when  a  commonwealth  of  sixty 
million  Americans  based  itself  upon  the  great  prin- 
ciple of  self-seeking,  self-seeking  was  the  best  thing,  and, 
whatever  hardship  it  seemed  to  work,  it  must  carry  with 
it  unseen  blessings  in  tenfold  measure.     If  a  few  hun- 
dred thousand  favored  Americans  enjoyed  the  privi- 
lege of  socially  contemning  all  the  rest,  it  was  as  clear- 
ly right  and  just  that  they  should  do  so  as  that  four 
thousand  American  millionaires  should  be  richer  than 
all  the  other  Americans  put  together.     Such  a  status, 
growing  out  of  our  political  equality  and  our  material 
prosperity,  must  evince  a  divine  purpose  to  any  one  in- 
timate with  the  designs  of  Providence,  and  it  seemed  a 
kind  of  impiety  to  doubt  its  perfection.     I  excused  the 
misgivings  which  I  could  not  help  seeing  in  the  Altru- 
rian  to  his  alien  traditions,  and  I  was  aware  that  my 
friends  had  done  so,  too.     But,  if  I  could  judge  from 
myself,  he  must  have  left  them  all  sensible  of  their  ef- 
fort; and  this  was  not  pleasant.     I  could  not  blink  the 
fact  that  although  I  had  openly  disagreed  with  him 
on  every  point  of  ethics  and  economics,  I  was  still  re- 
sponsible for  him  as  a  guest.     It  was  as  if  an  English 
gentleman  had  introduced  a  blatant  American  Democrat 
into  Tory  society ;  or,  rather,  as  if  a  Southerner  of  the 
olden  time  had  harbored  a  Xorthern  Abolitionist  and 
permitted  him  to  inquire  into  the  workings  of  slavery 
among  his  neighbors.    People  would  tolerate  him  as  my 
guest  for  a  time,  but  there  must  be  an  end  of  their 
patience  with  the  tacit  enmity  of  his  sentiments  and  the 
explicit  vulgarity  of  his  ideals,  and  when  the  end  came 
I  must  be  attainted  with  him. 

I  did  not  like  the  notion  of  this,  and  I  meant  to 
escape  it  if  I  could.  I  confess  that  I  would  have  will- 
ingly disowned  him,  as  I  had  already  disavowed  his 
opinions,  but  there  was  no  way  of  doing  it  short  of 

83 


A  TRAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

telling  him  to  go  away,  and  I  was  not  ready  to  do  that. 
Something  in  the  man,  I  do  not  know  what,  mysterious- 
ly appealed  to  me.  He  was  not  contemptibly  puerile 
without  being  lovably  childlike,  and  I  could  only  make 
up  my  mind  to  be  more  and  more  frank  with  him  and 
to  try  and  shield  him,  as  well  as  myself,  from  the  ef- 
fects I  dreaded. 

I  fell  asleep  planning  an  excursion  farther  into  the 
mountains,  which  should  take  up  the  rest  of  the  week 
that  I  expected  him  to  stay  with  me,  and  would  keep 
him  from  following  up  his  studies  of  American  life 
where  they  would  be  so  injurious  to  both  of  us  as  they 
must  in  our  hotel.  A  knock  at  my  door  roused  me, 
and  I  sent  a  drowsy  "  Come  in !"  toward  it  from  the 
bedclothes  without  looking  that  way. 

"  Good-morning !"  came  back  in  the  rich,  gentle  voice 
of  the  Altrurian.  I  lifted  my  head  with  a  jerk  from 
the  pillow,  and  saw  him  standing  against  the  closed 
door,  with  my  shoes  in  his  hand.  "  Oh,  I  am  sorry  I 
waked  you.    I  thought — " 

"  Not  at  all,  not  at  all,"  I  said.  "  It's  quite  time, 
I  dare  say.  But  you  oughtn't  to  have  taken  the  trouble 
to  bring  my  shoes  in." 

"  I  wasn't  altogether  disinterested  in  it,"  he  returned. 
"  I  wished  you  to  compliment  me  on  them.  Don't  you 
think  they  are  pretty  well  done,  for  an  amateur?"  He 
came  toward  my  bed,  and  turned  them  about  in  his 
hands,  so  that  they  would  catch  the  light,  and  smiled 
down  upon  me. 

"  I  don't  understand,"  I  began. 

"  Why,"  he  said,  "  I  blacked  them,  you  know." 

"  You  blacked  them  ?" 

"  Yes,"  he  returned,  easily.     "  I  thought  I  would  go 

into  the  baggage-room,  after  we  parted  last  night,  to 

look  for  a  piece  of  mine  that  had  not  been  taken  to 

84 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

my  room,  and  I  found  the  porter  there,  with  his  wrist 
bound  up.  He  said  he  had  strained  it  in  handling  a 
lady's  Saratoga — he  said  a  Saratoga  was  a  large  trunk 
— and  I  begged  him  to  let  me  relieve  him  at  the  boots 
he  was  blacking.  He  refused  at  first,  but  I  insisted 
upon  trying  my  hand  at  a  pair,  and  then  he  let  me  go 
on  with  the  men's  boots ;  he  said  he  could  varnish  the 
ladies'  without  hurting  his  wrist.  It  needed  less  skill 
than  I  supposed,  and  after  I  had  done  a  few  pairs  he 
said  I  couldv  black  boots  as  well  as  he." 

"  Did  anybody  see  you  ?"  I  gasped,  and  I  felt  a  cold 
perspiration  break  out  on  me. 

"  No,  we  had  the  whole  midnight  hour  to  ourselves. 
The  porter's  work  with  the  baggage  was  all  over,  and 
there  was  nothing  to  interrupt  the  delightful  chat  we 
fell  into.  He  is  a  very  intelligent  man,  and  he  told 
me  all  about  that  custom  of  feeing  which  you  depre- 
cate. He  says  that  the  servants  hate  it  as  much  as  the 
guests ;  they  have  to  take  the  tips  now  because  the  land- 
lords figure  on  them  in  the  wages,  and  they  cannot  live 
without  them.     He  is  a  fine,  manly  fellow,  and — " 

"  Mr.  Homos,"  I  broke  in,  with  the  strength  I  found 
in  his  assurance  that  no  one  had  seen  him  helping  the 
porter  black  boots,  "  I  want  to  speak  very  seriously  with 
you,  and  I  hope  you  will  not  be  hurt  if  I  speak  very 
plainly  about  a  matter  in  which  I  have  your  good  solely 
at  heart."  This  was  not  quite  true,  and  I  winced  in- 
wardly a  little  when  he  thanked  me  with  that  con- 
founded sincerity  of  his  which  was  so  much  like  irony ; 
but  I  went  on :  "  It  is  my  duty  to  you,  as  my  guest,  to 
tell  you  that  this  thing  of  doing  for  others  is  not  such 
a  simple  matter  here,  as  your  peculiar  training  leads 
you  to  think.  You  have  been  deceived  by  a  superficial 
likeness;   but,   really,   I   do  not  understand   how  you 

could  have  read  all  you  have  done  about  us  and  not 

85 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

realize  before  coming  here  that  America  and  Altru- 
ria  are  absolutely  distinct  and  diverse  in  their  actuat- 
ing principles.  They  are  both  republics,  I  know;  but 
America  is  a  republic  where  every  man  is  for  him- 
self, and  you  cannot  help  others  as  you  do  at  home; 
it  is  dangerous — it  is  ridiculous.  You  must  keep  this 
fact  in  mind,  or  you  will  fall  into  errors  that  will  be 
very  embarrassing  to  you  in  your  stay  among  us,  and," 
I  was  forced  to  add,  "  to  all  your  friends.  Now,  I  cer- 
tainly hoped,  after  what  I  had  said  to  you  and  what 
my  friends  had  explained  of  our  civilization,  that  you 
would  not  have  done  a  thing  of  this  kind.  I  will  see  the 
porter,  as  soon  as  I  am  up,  and  ask  him  not  to  mention 
the  matter  to  any  one,  but,  I  confess,  I  don't  like  to  take 
an  apologetic  tone  with  him ;  your  conditions  are  so 
alien  to  ours  that  they  will  seem  incredible  to  him,  and 
he  will  think  I  am  stuffing  him." 

"  I  don't  believe  he  will  think  that,"  said  the  Altru- 
rian,  "  and  I  hope  you  won't  find  the  case  so  bad  as 
it  seems  to  you.  I  am  extremely  sorry  to  have  done 
wrong — " 

"  Oh,  the  thing  wasn't  wrong  in  itself.  It  was  only 
wrong  under  the  circumstances.  Abstractly,  it  is  quite 
right  to  help  a  fellow-being  who  needs  help ;  no  one 
denies  that,  even  in  a  country  where  every  one  is  for 
himself." 

"  I  am  so  glad  to  hear  it,"  said  the  Altrurian. 
"  Then,  at  least,  I  have  not  gone  radically  astray ;  and 
I  do  not  think  you  need  take  the  trouble  to  explain 
the  Altrurian  ideas  to  the  porter.  I  have  done  that 
already,  and  they  seemed  quite  conceivable  to  him ;  he 
said  that  poor  folks  had  to  act  upon  them,  even  here, 
more  or  less,  and  that  if  they  did  not  act  upon  them 
there  would  be  no  chance  for  them  at  all.  He  says 
they  have  to  help  one  another  very  much  as  we  do  at 

8G 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

home,  and  that  it  is  only  the  rich  folks  among  you  who 
are  independent.  I  really  don't  think  yon  need  speak 
to  him  at  all,  unless  you  wish;  and  I  was  very  careful 
to  guard  my  offer  of  help  at  the  point  where  I  under- 
stood from  you  and  your  friends  that  it  might  do  harm. 
I  asked  him  if  there  was  not  some  one  who  would  help 
him  out  with  his  boot-blacking  for  money,  because  in 
that  case  I  should  be  glad  to  pay  him ;  but  he  said  there 
was  no  one  about  who  would  take  the  job;  that  he  had 
to  agree  to  black  the  boots,  or  else  he  would  not  have 
got  the  place  of  porter,  but  that  all  the  rest  of  the  help 
would  consider  it  a  disgrace,  and  would  not  help  him 
for  love  or  money.  So  it  seemed  quite  safe  to  offer  him 
my  services." 

I  felt  that  the  matter  was  almost  hopeless,  but  I 
asked :  "  And  what  he  said — didn't  that  suggest  any- 
thing else  to  you  ?" 

"  How  anything  else  ?"  asked  the  Altrurian,  in  his 
turn. 

"  Didn't  it  occur  to  you  that  if  none  of  his  fellow- 
servants  were  willing  to  help  him  black  boots,  and  if 
he  did  it  only  because  he  was  obliged  to,  it  was  hardly 
the  sort  of  work  for  you  ?" 

"  Why,  no,"  said  the  Altrurian,  with  absolute  sim- 
plicity. He  must  have  perceived  the  despair  I  fell 
into  at  this  answer,  for  he  asked :  "  Why  should  I  have 
minded  doing  for  others  what  I  should  have  been  will- 
ing to  do  for  myself  ?" 

"  There  are  a  great  many  things  we  are  willing  to 

do  for  ourselves  that  we  are  not  willing  to  do  for  others. 

But  even  on  that  principle,  which  I  think  false  and 

illogical,  you  could  not  be  justified.     A  gentleman  is 

not  willing  to  black  his  own  boots.     It  is  offensive  to 

his  feelings,  to  his  self-respect ;  it  is  something  he  will 

not  do  if  he  can  get  anybody  else  to  do  it  for  him." 

87 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  Then  in  America,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  it  is  not 
offensive  to  the  feelings  of  a  gentleman  to  let  another 
do  for  him  what  he  would  not  do  for  himself  ?" 

"  Certainly  not." 

"Ah,"  he  returned,  "then  we  understand  something 
altogether  different  by  the  word  gentleman  in  Altru- 
ria.  I  see,  now,  how  I  have  committed  a  mistake.  I 
shall  be  more  careful  hereafter." 

I  thought  I  had  better  leave  the  subject,  and,  "  By- 
the-way,"  I  said,  "  how  would  you  like  to  take  a  little 
tramp  with  me  to-day  farther  up  into  the  moun- 
tains ?" 

"  I  should  be  delighted,"  said  the  Altrurian,  so  grate- 
fully that  I  was  ashamed  to  think  why  I  was  proposing 
the  pleasure  to  him. 

"  Well,  then,  I  shall  be  ready  to  start  as  soon  as  we 
have  had  breakfast.  I  will  join  you  down-stairs  in  half 
an  hour." 

He  left  me  at  this  hint,  though  really  I  was  half 
afraid  he  might  stay  and  offer  to  lend  me  a  hand  at  my 
toilet,  in  the  expression  of  his  national  character.  I 
found  him  with  Mrs.  Makely,  when  I  went  down,  and 
she  began,  with  a  parenthetical  tribute  to  the  beauty  of 
the  mountains  in  the  morning  light :  "  Don't  be  sur- 
prised to  see  me  up  at  this  unnatural  hour.  I  don't 
know  whether  it  was  the  excitement  of  our  talk  last 
night,  or  what  it  was,  but  my  sulphonal  wouldn't  act, 
though  I  took  fifteen  grains,  and  I  was  up  with  the 
lark,  or  should  have  been,  if  there  had  been  any  lark 
outside  of  literature  to  be  up  with.  However,  this  air 
is  so  glorious  that  I  don't  mind  losing  a  night's  sleep 
now  and  then.  I  believe  that  with  a  little  practice  one 
could  get  along  without  any  sleep  at  all  here ;  at  least,  I 
could.  I'm  sorry  to  say  poor  Mr.  Makely  can't,  ap- 
parently.    Pie's  making  up  for  his  share  of  my  vigils, 

88 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

and  I'm  going  to  breakfast  without  him.  Do  you  know, 
I've  done  a  very  bold  thing:  I've  got  the  head-waiter 
to  give  you  places  at  our  table;  I  know  you'll  hate  it, 
Mr.  Twelvemough,  because  you  naturally  want  to  keep 
Mr.  Homos  to  yourself,  and  I  don't  blame  you  at  all ; 
but  I'm  simply  not  going  to  let  you,  and  that's  all  there 
is  about  it." 

The  pleasure  I  felt  at  this  announcement  was  not 
unmixed,  but  I  tried  to  keep  Mrs.  Makely  from  think- 
ing so,  and  I  was  immensely  relieved  when  she  found 
a  chance  to  say  to  me,  in  a  low  voice :  "  I  know  just 
how  you're  feeling,  Mr.  Twelvemough,  and  I'm  going 
to  help  you  keep  him  from  doing  anything  ridiculous, 
if  I  can.  I  like  him,  and  I  think  it's  a  perfect  shame 
to  have  people  laughing  at  him.  I  know  we  can  man- 
age him  between  us." 

We  so  far  failed,  however,  that  the  Altrurian  shook 
hands  with  the  head-waiter  when  he  pressed  open  the 
wire-netting  door  to  let  us  into  the  dining-room,  and 
made  a  bow  to  our  waitress  of  the  sort  one  makes  to  a 
lady.  But  we  thought  it  best  to  ignore  these  little 
errors  of  his  and  reserve  our  moral  strength  for  any- 
thing more  spectacular.  Fortunately  we  got  through 
our  breakfast  with  nothing  worse  than  his  jumping  up 
and  stooping  to  hand  the  waitress  a  spoon  she  let  fall ; 
but  this  could  easily  pass  for  some  attention  to  Mrs. 
Makely  at  a  little  distance.  There  were  not  many 
people  down  to  breakfast  yet ;  but  I  could  see  that  there 
was  a  good  deal  of  subdued  sensation  among  the  wait- 
resses, standing  with  folded  arms  behind  their  tables, 
and  that  the  head-waiter's  handsome  face  was  red  with 
anxiety. 

Mrs.  Makely  asked  if  we  were  going  to  church.     She 

said  she  was  driving  that  way,  and  would  be  glad  to 

drop  us.    "  I'm  not  going  myself,"  she  explained,  "  be- 

89" 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

cause  I  couldn't  make  anything  of  the  sermon,  with  my 
head  in  the  state  it  is,  and  I'm  going  to  compromise 
on  a  good  action.  I  want  to  carry  some  books  and  pa- 
pers over  to  Mrs.  Camp.  Don't  you  think  that  will  be 
quite  as  acceptable,  Mr.  Homos  ?" 

"  I  should  venture  to  hope  it,"  he  said,  with  a  tolerant 
seriousness  not  altogether  out  of  keeping  with  her  light- 
ness. 

"  Who  is  Mrs.  Camp  ?"  I  asked,  not  caring  to  commit 
myself  on  the  question. 

"  Lizzie's  mother.  You  know  I  told  you  about  them 
last  night.  I  think  she  must  have  got  through  the  books 
I  lent  her,  and  I  know  Lizzie  didn't  like  to  ask  me  for 
more,  because  she  saw  me  talking  with  you,  and  didn't 
want  to  interrupt  us.  Such  a  nice  girl!  I  think  the 
Sunday  papers  must  have  come,  and  I'll  take  them  over, 
too;  Mrs.  Camp  is  always  so  glad  to  get  them,  and  she 
is  so  delightful  when  she  gets  going  about  public  events. 
But  perhaps  you  don't  approve  of  Sunday  papers,  Mr. 
Homos." 

"  I'm  sure  I  don't  know,  madam.  I  haven't  seen 
them  yet.  You  know  this  is  the  first  Sunday  I've  been 
in  America." 

"  Well,  I'm  sorry  to  say  you  won't  see  the  old  Puri- 
tan Sabbath,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  an  abrupt  de- 
flection from  the  question  of  the  Sunday  papers. 
"  Though  you  ought  to,  up  in  these  hills.  The  only 
thing  left  of  it  is  rye-and-Indian  bread,  and  these  baked 
beans  and  fish-balls." 

"  But  they  are  very  good  ?" 

"  Yes,  I  dare  say  they  are  not  the  worst  of  it," 

She  was  a  woman  who  tended  to  levity,  and  I  was  a 
little  afraid  she  might  be  going  to  say  something  ir- 
reverent; but,  if  she  were,  she  was  forestalled  by  the 
Altrurian  asking:  "Would  it  be  very  indiscreet,  mad- 

90 


A  TRAVELER  EROM  ALTRURIA 

am,  if  I  were  to  ask  you  some  time  to  introduce  me  to 
that  family  P 

"  The  Camps  ?"  she  returned.  "  Not  at  all.  I  should 
be  perfectly  delighted."  The  thought  seemed  to  strike 
her,  and  she  asked:  ''Why  not  go  with  me  this  morn- 
ing, unless  you  are  inflexibly  bent  on  going  to  church, 
you  and  Mr.  Twelvemough  ?" 

The  Altrurian  glanced  at  me,  and  I  said  I  should  be 
only  too  glad,  if  I  could  carry  some  books,  so  that  I 
could  compromise  on  a  good  action,  too.  "  Take  one  of 
your  own,"  she  instantly  suggested. 

"  Do  you  think  they  wouldn't  be  too  severe  upon  it  ?" 
I  asked. 

"  Well,  Mrs.  Camp  might,"  Mrs.  Makely  consented, 
with  a  smile.  "  She  goes  in  for  rather  serious  fiction ; 
but  I  think  Lizzie  would  enjoy  a  good,  old-fashioned 
love-story,  where  everybody  got  married,  as  they  do  in 
your  charming  books." 

I  winced  a  little,  for  every  one  likes  to  be  regarded 
seriously,  and  I  did  not  enjoy  being  remanded  to  the 
young-girl  public ;  but  I  put  a  bold  face  on  it,  and  said : 
"  My  good  action  shall  be  done  in  behalf  of  Miss 
Lizzie." 

Half  an  hour  later,  Mrs.  Makely  having  left  word 
with  the  clerk  where  we  were  gone,  so  that  her  hus- 
band need  not  be  alarmed  when  he  got  up,  we  were 
striking  into  the  hills  on  a  two-seated  blackboard,  with 
one  of  the  best  teams  of  our  hotel,  and  one  of  the  most 
taciturn  drivers.  Mrs.  Makely  had  the  Altrurian  get 
into  the  back  seat  with  her,  and,  after  some  attempts 
to  make  talk  with  the  driver,  I  leaned  over  and  joined 
in  their  talk.  The  Altrurian  was  greatly  interested, 
not  so  much  in  the  landscape — though  he  owned  its 
beauty  when  we  cried  out  over  it  from  point  to  point 

— but  in  the  human  incidents  and  features.    He  noticed 

91 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

the  cattle  in  the  fields,  and  the  horses  we  met  on  the 
road,  and  the  taste  and  comfort  of  the  buildings,  the 
variety  of  the  crops,  and  the  promise  of  the  harvest.  I 
was  glad  of  the  respite  his  questions  gave  me  from  the 
study  of  the  intimate  character  of  our  civilization,  for 
they  were  directed  now  at  these  more  material  facts, 
and  I  willingly  joined  Mrs.  Makely  in  answering  them. 
We  explained  that  the  finest  teams  we  met  were  from 
the  different  hotels  or  boarding-houses,  or  at  least  from 
the  farms  where  the  people  took  city  people  to  board; 
and  that  certain  shabby  equipages  belonged  to  the  na- 
tives who  lived  solely  by  cultivating  the  soil.  There 
was  not  very  much  of  the  soil  cultivated,  for  the  chief 
crop  was  hay,  with  here  and  there  a  patch  of  potatoes 
or  beans,  and  a  few  acres  in  sweet-corn.  The  houses 
of  the  natives,  when  they  were  for  their  use  only,  were 
no  better  than  their  turnouts;  it  was  where  the  city 
boarder  had  found  shelter  that  they  were  modern  and 
pleasant.  Now  and  then  we  came  to  a  deserted  home- 
stead, and  I  tried  to  make  the  Altrurian  understand 
how  farming  in  New  England  had  yielded  to  the  com- 
petition of  the  immense  agricultural  operations  of  the 
West.  "  You  know,"  I  said,  "  that  agriculture  is  really 
an  operation  out  there,  as  much  as  coal-mining  is  in 
Pennsylvania,  or  finance  in  Wall  Street;  you  have  no 
idea  of  the  vastness  of  the  scale."  Perhaps  I  swelled 
a  little  with  pride  in  my  celebration  of  the  national 
prosperity,  as  it  flowed  from  our  Western  farms  of  five 
and  ten  and  twenty  thousand  acres;  I  could  not  very 
well  help  putting  on  the  pedal  in  these  passages.  Mrs. 
Makely  listened  almost  as  eagerly  as  the  Altrurian,  for, 
as  a  cultivated  American  woman,  she  was  necessarily 
quite  ignorant  of  her  own  country,  geographically, 
politically,   and  historically.      "  The   only  people  left 

in  the  hill  country  of  New  England,"  I  concluded, 

92 


A  TEAVELEK  FKOM  ALTRUEIA 

"  are  those  who  are  too  old  or  too  lazy  to  get  away. 
Any  young  man  of  energy  would  be  ashamed  to  stay, 
unless  he  wanted  to  keep  a  boarding-house  or  live  on 
the  city  vacationists  in  summer.  If  he  doesn't,  he  goes 
West  and  takes  up  some  of  the  new  land,  and  comes 
back  in  middle-life  and  buys  a  deserted  farm  to  spend 
his  summers  on." 

"Dear  me!"  said  the  Altrurian.  "Is  it  so  simple 
as  that  ?  Then  we  can  hardly  wonder  at  their  owners 
leaving  these  worn-out  farms ;  though  I  suppose  it  must 
be  with  the  pang  of  exile,  sometimes." 

"  Oh,  I  fancy  there  isn't  much  sentiment  involved," 
I  answered,  lightly. 

"  Whoa !"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  speaking  to  the  horses 
before  she  spoke  to  the  driver,  as  some  women  will.  He 
pulled  them  up,  and  looked  round  at  her. 

"  Isn't  that  Keuben  Camp,  now,  over  there  by  that 
house  ?"  she  asked,  as  if  we  had  been  talking  of  him ; 
that  is  another  way  some  women  have. 

"  Yes,  ma'am,"  said  the  driver. 

"  Oh,  well,  then !"  and  "  Reuben !"  she  called  to  the 
young  man,  who  was  prowling  about  the  door-yard  of 
a  sad-colored  old  farm-house,  and  peering  into  a  win- 
dow here  and  there.  "  Come  here  a  moment — won't 
you,  please  ?" 

He  lifted  his  head  and  looked  round,  and,  when  he 
had  located  the  appeal  made  to  him,  he  came  down  the 
walk  to  the  gate  and  leaned  over  it,  waiting  for  further 
instructions.  I  saw  that  it  was  the  young  man  whom  we 
had  noticed  with  the  girl  Mrs.  Makely  called  Lizzie  on 
the  hotel  piazza  the  night  before. 

"  Do  you  know  whether  I  should  find  Lizzie  at  home 
this  morning  ?" 

"  Yes,  she's  there  with  mother,"  said  the  young  fel- 
low, with  neither  liking  nor  disliking  in  his  tone. 

7  93 


A  TEAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  Oh,  I'm  so  glad !"  said  the  lady.  "  I  didn't  know 
but  she  might  be  at  church.  What  in  the  world  has 
happened  here  ?  Is  there  anything  unusual  going  on 
inside  ?" 

"  ISTo,  I  was  just  looking  to  see  if  it  was  all  right. 
The  folks  wanted  I  should  come  round." 

"  Why,  where  are  they  ?" 

"  Oh,  they're  gone." 

"  Gone  ?" 

"Yes;  gone  West.  They've  left  the  old  place,  be- 
cause they  couldn't  make  a  living  here  any  longer." 

"  Why,  this  is  quite  a  case  in  point,"  I  said.  "  Now, 
Mr.  Homos,  here  is  a  chance  to  inform  yourself  at  first 
hand  about  a  very  interesting  fact  of  our  civilization  " ; 
and  I  added,  in  a  low  voice,  to  Mrs.  Makely :  "  Won't 
you  introduce  us  ?" 

"  Oh  yes.  Mr.  Camp,  this  is  Mr.  Twelvemough, 
the  author — you  know  his  books,  of  course;  and  Mr. 
Homos,  a  gentleman  from  Altruria." 

The  young  fellow  opened  the  gate  he  leaned  on  and 
came  out  to  us.  He  took  no  notice  of  me,  but  he  seized 
the  Altrurian's  hand  and  wrung  it.  "  I've  heard  of 
you,"  he  said.  "  Mrs.  Makely,  were  you  going  to  our 
place  ?" 

"  Why,  yes." 

"  So  do,  then.  Mother  would  give  almost  anything 
to  see  Mr.  Homos.  We've  heard  of  Altruria,  over  our 
way,"  he  added  to  our  friend.  "  Mother's  been  reading 
up  all  she  can  about  it.  She'll  want  to  talk  with  you, 
and  she  won't  give  the  rest  of  us  much  of  a  chance,  I 
guess." 

"  Oh,  I  shall  be  glad  to  see  her,"  said  the  Altrurian, 
"  and  to  tell  her  everything  I  can.  But  won't  you  ex- 
plain to  me  first  something  about  your  deserted  farms 

here  %    It's  quite  a  new  thing  to  me." 

94 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  It  isn't  a  new  thing  to  ns,"  said  the  young  fellow, 
with  a  short  laugh.  "  And  there  isn't  much  to  explain 
about  it.  You'll  see  them  all  through  New  England. 
When  a  man  finds  lie  can't  get  his  funeral  expenses  out 
of  the  land,  he  don't  feel  like  staying  to  be  buried  in 
it,  and  he  pulls  up  and  goes." 

"  But  people  used  to  get  their  living  expenses  here," 
I  suggested.     "  Why  can't  they  now  V 

"  Well,  they  didn't  use  to  have  Western  prices  to 
fight  with;  and  then  the  land  wasn't  worn  out  so,  and 
the  taxes  were  not  so  heavy.  How  would  you  like  to 
pay  twenty  to  thirty  dollars  on  the  thousand,  and  as- 
sessed up  to  the  last  notch,  in  the  city  V 

"  Why,  what  in  the  world  makes  your  taxes  so 
heavy  ?" 

"  Schools  and  roads.  We've  got  to  have  schools,  and 
you  city  folks  want  good  roads  when  you  come  here  in 
the  summer,  don't  you  ?  Then  the  season  is  short,  and 
sometimes  we  can't  make  a  crop.  The  frost  catches  the 
corn  in  the  field,  and  you  have  your  trouble  for  your 
pains.  Potatoes  are  the  only  thing  we  can  count  on, 
except  grass,  and,  when  everybody  raises  potatoes,  you 
know  where  the  price  goes." 

"  Oh,  but  now,  Mr.  Camp,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  lean- 
ing over  toward  him,  and  speaking  in  a  cosey  and  coax- 
ing tone,  as  if  he  must  not  really  keep  the  truth  from 
an  old  friend  like  her,  "  isn't  it  a  good  deal  because  the 
farmers'  daughters  want  pianos,  and  the  farmers'  sons 
want  buggies  ?  I  heard  Professor  Lumen  saying,  the 
other  day,  that,  if  the  farmers  were  willing  to  work  as 
they  used  to  work,  they  could  still  get  a  good  living  off 
their  farms,  and  that  they  gave  up  their  places  because 
they  were  too  lazy,  in  many  cases,  to  farm  them  prop- 
erly." 

"He'd  better  not  let  me  hear  him  saying  that,"  said 

95 


A  TKAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

the  young  fellow,  while  a  hot  flush  passed  over  his  face. 
He  added,  bitterly :  "  If  he  wants  to  see  how  easy  it  is 
to  make  a  living  up  here,  he  can  take  this  place  and  try 
for  a  year  or  two ;  he  can  get  it  cheap.  But  I  guess  he 
wouldn't  want  it  the  year  round;  he'd  only  want  it  a 
few  months  in  the  summer,  when  he  could  enjoy  the 
sightliness  of  it,  and  see  me  working  over  there  on  my 
farm,  while  he  smoked  on  his  front  porch."  He  turned 
round  and  looked  at  the  old  house  in  silence  a  moment. 
Then,  as  he  went  on,  his  voice  lost  its  angry  ring. 
"  The  folks  here  bought  this  place  from  the  Indians, 
and  they'd  been  here  more  than  two  hundred  years. 
Do  you  think  they  left  it  because  they  were  too  lazy 
to  run  it,  or  couldn't  get  pianos  and  buggies  out  of 
it,  or  were  such  fools  as  not  to  know  whether  they  were 
well  off?  It  was  their  home;  they  were  born  and  lived 
and  died  here.  There  is  the  family  burying-ground 
over  there." 

Neither  Mrs.  Makely  nor  myself  was  ready  with  a 
reply,  and  we  left  the  word  with  the  Altrurian,  who 
suggested :  "  Still,  I  suppose  they  will  be  more  pros- 
perous in  the  West  on  the  new  land  they  take  up  ?" 

The  young  fellow  leaned  his  arms  on  the  wheel  by 
which  he  stood.  "  What  do  you  mean  by  taking  up 
new  land  ?" 

"  Why,  out  of  the  public  domain — " 

"  There  ain't  any  public  domain  that's  worth  having. 

All  the  good  land  is  in  the  hands  of  railroads  and  farm 

syndicates  and  speculators ;  and  if  you  want  a  farm  in 

the  West  you've  got  to  buy  it ;  the  East  is  the  only  place 

where  folks  give  them  away,  because  they  ain't  worth 

keeping.     If  you  haven't  got  the  ready  money,  you  can 

buy  one  on  credit,  and  pay  ten,  twenty,  and  thirty  per 

cent,  interest,  and  live  in  a  dugout  on  the  plains — till 

your  mortgage  matures."     The  young  man  took  his 

96 


A  TRAVELER  FROil  ALTRURIA 

arms  from  the  wheel  and  moved  a  few  steps  backward, 
as  he  added :  "  I'll  see  you  over  at  the  house  later." 

The  driver  touched  his  horses,  and  we  started  briskly 
off  again.  But  I  confess  I  had  quite  enough  of  his 
pessimism,  and  as  we  drove  away  I  leaned  back  toward 
the  Altrurian  and  said :  "  Xow,  it  is  all  perfect  non- 
sense to  pretend  that  things  are  at  that  pass  with  us. 
There  are  more  millionaires  in  America,  probably,  than 
there  are  in  all  the  other  civilized  countries  of  the 
globe,  and  it  is  not  possible  that  the  farming  popula- 
tion should  be  in  such  a  hopeless  condition.  All  wealth 
comes  out  of  the  earth,  and  you  may  be  sure  they  get 
their  full  share  of  it." 

"  I  am  glad  to  hear  you  say  so,"  said  the  Altrurian. 
"  What  is  the  meaning  of  this  new  party  in  the  West 
that  seems  to  have  held  a  convention  lately?  I  read 
something  of  it  in  the  train  yesterday." 

"  Oh,  that  is  a  lot  of  crazy  Hayseeds,  who  don't  want 
to  pay  back  the  money  they  have  borrowed,  or  who 
find  themselves  unable  to  meet  their  interest.  It  will 
soon  blow  over.  We  are  always  having  these  political 
flurries.  A  good  crop  will  make  it  all  right  with 
them." 

"  But  is  it  true  that  they  have  to  pay  such  rates  of 
interest  as  our  young  friend  mentioned  ?" 

"  Well,"  I  said,  seeing  the  thing  in  the  humorous 
light  which  softens  for  us  Americans  so  many  of  the 
hardships  of  others,  "  I  suppose  that  man  likes  to 
squeeze  his  brother  man  when  lie  gets  him  in  his  grip. 
That's  human  nature,  you  know." 

"  Is  it  ?"  asked  the  Altrurian. 

It  seemed  to  me  that  he  had  asked  something  like 
that  before  when  I  alleged  human  nature  in  defence 
of  some  piece  of  every-dav  selfishness.  But  I  thought 
best  not  to  notice  it,  and  T  went  on:  "The  land  is  so 

97 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

rich  out  there  that  a  farm  will  often  pay  for  itself 
with  a  single  crop." 

"  Is  it  possible?"  cried  the  Altrurian.  "  Then  I  sup- 
pose it  seldom  really  happens  that  a  mortgage  is  fore- 
closed, in  the  way  our  young  friend  insinuated  V 

"  Well,  I  can't  say  that  exactly  " ;  and,  having  ad- 
mitted so  much,  I  did  not  feel  bound  to  impart  a  fact 
that  popped  perversely  into  my  mind.  I  was  once  talk- 
ing with  a  Western  money-lender,  a  very  good  sort  of 
fellow,  frank  and  open  as  the  day ;  I  asked  him  whether 
the  farmers  generally  paid  off  their  mortgages,  and  he 
answered  me  that  if  the  mortgage  was  to  the  value  of 
a  fourth  of  the  land,  the  former  might  pay  it  off,  but 
if  it  were  to  a  half,  or  a  third  even,  he  never  paid  it, 
but  slaved  on  and  died  in  his  debts.  "  You  may  be 
sure,  however,"  I  concluded,  "  that  our  young  friend 
takes  a  jaundiced  view  of  the  situation." 

"  Now,  really,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  "  I  must  insist 
upon  dropping  this  everlasting  talk  about  money.  I 
think  it  is  perfectly  disgusting,  and  I  believe  it  was 
Mr.  Makely's  account  of  his  speculations  that  kept  me 
awake  last  night.  My  brain  got  running  on  figures 
till  the  dark  seemed  to  be  all  sown  with  dollar-marks, 
like  the  stars  in  the  Milky  Way.  I — ugh!  What  in 
the  world  is  it  ?     Oh,  you  dreadful  little  things !" 

Mrs.  Makely  passed  swiftly  from  terror  to  hysterical 
laughter  as  the  driver  pulled  up  short  and  a  group  of 
barefooted  children  broke  in  front  of  his  horses  and 
scuttled  out  of  the  dust  into  the  road-side  bushes  like 
a  covey  of  quails.  There  seemed  to  be  a  dozen  of  them, 
nearly  all  the  same  in  size,  but  there  turned  out  to  be 
only  five  or  six;  or  at  least  no  more  showed  their  gleam- 
ing eyes  and  teeth  through  the  underbrush  in  quiet  en- 
joyment of  the  lady's  alarm. 

"  Don't  you  know  that  you  might  have  got  killed  ?" 

98 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

she  demanded,  with  that  severity  good  women  feel  for 
people  who  have  just  escaped  with  their  lives.  "  How 
lovely  the  dirty  little  dears  are !"  she  added,  in  the  next 
wave  of  emotion.  One  bold  fellow  of  six  showed  a  half- 
length  above  the  bushes,  and  she  asked :  "  Don't  you 
know  that  you  oughtn't  to  play  in  the  road  when  there 
are  so  many  teams  passing  ?  Are  all  those  your  brothers 
and  sisters  ?" 

He  ignored  the  first  question.  "  One's  my  cousin." 
I  pulled  out  a  half-dozen  coppers,  and  held  my  hand 
toward  him.  "  See  if  there  is  one  for  each."  They 
had  no  difficulty  in  solving  the  simple  mathematical 
problem  except  the  smallest  girl,  who  cried  for  fear 
and  baffled  longing.  I  tossed  the  coin  to  her,  and  a 
little  fat  dog  darted  out  at  her  feet  and  caught  it  up 
in  his  mouth.  "  Oh,  good  gracious !"  I  called  out  in 
my  light,  humorous  way.  "  Do  you  suppose  he's  going 
to  spend  it  for  candy  ?"  The  little  people  thought  that 
a  famous  joke,  and  they  laughed  with  the  gratitude  that 
even  small  favors  inspire.  "  Bring  your  sister  here," 
I  said  to  the  boldest  boy,  and,  when  he  came  up  with 
the  little  woman,  I  put  another  copper  into  her  hand. 
"  Look  out  that  the  greedy  dog  doesn't  get  it,"  I  said, 
and  my  gayety  met  with  fresh  applause.  "  Where  do 
you  live  ?"  I  asked,  with  some  vague  purpose  of  show- 
ing the  Altrurian  the  kindliness  that  exists  between  our 
upper  and  lower  classes. 

"  Over  there,"  said  the  boy.     I  followed  the  twist  of 

his  head,  and  glimpsed  a  wooden  cottage  on  the  border 

of  the  forest,  so  very  new  that  the  sheathing  had  not 

yet  been  covered  with  clapboards.     I  stood  up  in  the 

buckboard  and  saw  that  it  was  a  story  and  a  half  high, 

and  could  have  had  four  or  five  rooms  in  it.     The  bare, 

curtainless  windows  were  set  in  the  unpainted  frames, 

but  the  front  door  seemed  not  to  be  hung  yet.     The 

99 


A  TEAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

people  meant  to  winter  there,  however,  for  the  sod  was 
banked  np  against  the  wooden  underpinning;  a  stove- 
pipe stuck  out  of  the  roof  of  a  little  wing  behind. 
While  I  gazed  a  young-looking  woman  came  to  the 
door,  as  if  she  had  been  drawn  by  our  talk  with  the 
children,  and  then  she  jumped  down  from  the  thresh- 
old, which  still  wanted  a  doorstep,  and  came  slowly 
out  to  us.  The  children  ran  to  her  with  their  coppers, 
and  then  followed  her  back  to  ns. 

Mrs.  Makely  called  to  her  before  she  reached  us :  "  I 
hope  you  weren't  frightened.  We  didn't  drive  over  any 
of  them." 

"  Oh,  I  wasn't  frightened,"  said  the  young  woman. 
"  It's  a  very  safe  place  to  bring  up  children,  in  the 
country,  and  I  never  feel  uneasy  about  them." 

"  Yes,  if  they  are  not  under  the  horses'  feet,"  said 
Mrs.  Makely,  mingling  instruction  and  amusement  very 
judiciously  in  her  reply.     "  Are  they  all  yours  ?" 

"  Only  five,"  said  the  mother,  and  she  pointed  to  the 
alien  in  her  flock.  "  He's  my  sister's.  She  lives  just 
below  here."  Her  children  had  grouped  themselves 
about  her,  and  she  kept  passing  her  hands  caressingly 
over  their  little  heads  as  she  talked.  "  My  sister  has 
nine  children,  but  she  has  the  rest  at  church  with  her 
to-day." 

"  You  don't  speak  like  an  American,"  Mrs.  Makely 
suggested. 

"  No,  we're  English.  Our  husbands  work  in  the 
quarry.  That's  my  little  palace."  The  woman  nodded 
her  head  toward  the  cottage. 

"  It's  going  to  be  very  nice,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with 
an  evident  perception  of  her  pride  in  it. 

"  Yes,  if  we  ever  get  money  to  finish  it.     Thank  you 

for  the  children." 

"  Oh,   it  was  this  gentleman."     Mrs.   Makely  indi- 

100 


A  TRAVELER  EROM  ALTRURIA 

cated  me,  and  I  bore  the  merit  of  my  good  action  as 
modestly  as  I  could. 

"  Then  thank  you,  sir,"  said  the  young  woman,  and 
she  asked  Mrs.  Makely :  "  You're  not  living  about  here, 
ma'am  V* 

"  Oh  no,  we're  staying  at  the  hotel." 

"  At  the  hotel !    It  must  be  very  dear,  there." 

"  Yes,  it  is  expensive,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  a 
note  of  that  satisfaction  in  her  voice  which  we  all  feel 
in  spending  a  great  deal  of  money. 

"  But  I  suppose  you  can  afford  it,"  said  the  woman, 
whose  eye  was  running  hungrily  over  Mrs.  Makely's 
pretty  costume.  "  Some  are  poor,  and  some  are  rich. 
That's  the  way  the  world  has  to  be  made  up,  isn't  it  ?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  very  dryly,  and  the  talk 
languished  from  this  point,  so  that  the  driver  felt 
warranted  in  starting  up  his  horses.  When  we  had 
driven  beyond  earshot  she  said :  "  I  knew  she  was  not 
an  American,  as  soon  as  she  spoke,  by  her  accent,  and 
then  those  foreigners  have  no  self-respect.  That  was 
a  pretty  bold  bid  for  a  contribution  to  finish  up  her 
'  little  palace  ' !  I'm  glad  you  didn't  give  her  anything, 
Mr.  Twelvemough.  I  was  afraid  your  sympathies  had 
been  wrought  upon." 

"  Oh,  not  at  all,"  I  answered.  "  I  saw  the  mischief 
I  had  done  with  the  children." 

The  Altrurian,  who  has  not  asked  anything  for  a 
long  time,  but  had  listened  with  eager  interest  to  all 
that  passed,  now  came  up  smiling  with  his  question: 
"  Will  you  kindly  tell  me  what  harm  would  have  been 
done  by  offering  the  woman  a  little  money  to  help  finish 
up  her  cottage  ?" 

I  did  not  allow  Mrs.  Makely  to  answer,  I  was  so 
eager  to  air  my  political  economy.  "  The  very  greatest 
harm.     It  would  have  pauperized  her.     You  have  no 

101 


A  TRAVELER  EROM  ALTRURIA 

idea  how  quickly  they  give  way  to  the  poison  of  that 
sort  of  thing.  As  soon  as  they  get  any  sort  of  help  they 
expect  more ;  they  count  upon  it,  and  they  begin  to  live 
upon  it.  The  sight  of  those  coppers  which  I  gave  her 
children — more  out  of  joke  than  charity — demoralized 
the  woman.  She  took  us  for  rich  people,  and  wanted 
us  to  build  her  a  house.  You  have  to  guard  against 
every  approach  to  a  thing  of  that  sort." 

"  I  don't  believe,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  "  that  an  Ameri- 
can would  have  hinted,  as  she  did." 

"  No,  an  American  would  not  have  done  that,  I'm 
thankful  to  say.  They  take  fees,  but  they  don't  ask 
charity,  yet."  We  went  on  to  exult  in  the  noble  in- 
dependence of  the  American  character  in  all  classes, 
at  some  length.  We  talked  at  the  Altrurian,  but  he 
did  not  seem  to  hear  us.  At  last  he  asked,  with  a  faint 
sigh :  "  Then,  in  your  conditions,  a  kindly  impulse  to 
aid  one  who  needs  your  help  is  something  to  be  guarded 
against  as  possibly  pernicious  ?" 

"  Exactly,"  I  said.  "  And  now  you  see  what  difficul- 
ties beset  us  in  dealing  with  the  problem  of  poverty. 
We  cannot  let  people  suffer,  for  that  would  be  cruel; 
and  we  cannot  relieve  their  need  without  pauperizing 
them." 

"  I  see,"  he  answered.  "  It  is  a  terrible  quan- 
dary." 

"  I  wish,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  "  that  you  would  tell 
us  just  how  you  manage  with  the  poor  in  Altruria." 

"  We  have  none,"  he  replied. 

"  But  the  comparatively  poor — you  have  some  people 
who  are  richer  than  others  ?" 

"  No.  We  should  regard  that  as  the  worst  inciv- 
ism." 

"  What  is  incivism  ?" 

I  interpreted,  "  Bad  citizenship." 

102 


A  TKAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"Well,  then,  if  you  will  excuse  me,  Mr.  Homos," 
she  said,  "I  think  that  is  simply  impossible.  There 
must  be  rich  and  there  must  be  poor.  There  always 
have  been,  and  there  always  will  be.  That  woman  said 
it  as  well  as  anybody.  Didn't  Christ  Himself  say,  '  The 
poor  ye  have  always  with  you  '  ?" 


VII 


The  Altrurian  looked  at  Mrs.  Makely  with  an  amaze- 
ment visibly  heightened  by  the  air  of  complacency  she 
put  on  after  delivering  this  poser :  "  Do  you  really  think 
Christ  meant  that  you  ought  always  to  have  the  poor 
with  you  ?"  he  asked. 

"  Why,  of  course !"  she  answered,  triumphantly. 
"  How  else  are  the  sympathies  of  the  rich  to  be  culti- 
vated ?  The  poverty  of  some  and  the  wealth  of  others, 
isn't  that  what  forms  the  great  tie  of  human  brother- 
hood ?  If  we  were  all  comfortable,  or  all  shared  alike, 
there  could  not  be  anything  like  charity,  and  Paul  said, 
'  The  greatest  of  these  is  charity.'  I  believe  it's  '  love' 
in  the  new  version,  but  it  comes  to  the  same  thing." 

The  Altrurian  gave  a  kind  of  gasp,  and  then  lapsed 
into  a  silence  that  lasted  until  we  came  in  sight  of  the 
Camp  farm-house.  It  stood  on  the  crest  of  a  road-side 
upland,  and  looked  down  the  beautiful  valley,  bathed 
in  Sabbath  sunlight,  and  away  to  the  ranges  of  hills, 
so  far  that  it  was  hard  to  say  whether  it  was  sun  or 
shadow  that  dimmed  their  distance.  Decidedly,  the 
place  was  what  the  country  people  call  sightly.  The 
old  house,  once  painted  a  Brandon  red,  crouched  low  to 
the  ground,  with  its  lean-to  in  the  rear,  and  its  flat- 
arched  wood-sheds  and  wagon-houses  stretching  away  at 
the  side  of  the  barn,  and  covering  the  approach  to  it 
with  an  unbroken  roof.  There  were  flowers  in  the  beds 
along  the  underpinning  of  the  house,  which  stood  close 
to  the  street,  and  on  one  side  of  the  door  was  a  clump  of 

104 


A  TRAVELER  EROM  ALTRURIA 

Spanish  willow;  an  old-fashioned  June  rose  climbed 
over  it  from  the  other.  An  aged  dog  got  stiffly  to  his 
feet  from  the  threshold  stone  and  whimpered  as  our 
buckboard  drew  up ;  the  poultry  picking  about  the  path 
and  among  the  chips  lazily  made  way  for  us,  and  as  our 
wheels  ceased  to  crunch  upon  the  gravel  we  heard  hasty 
steps,  and  Reuben  Camp  came  round  the  corner  of  the 
house  in  time  to  give  Mrs.  Makely  his  hand  and  help 
her  spring  to  the  ground,  which  she  did  very  lightly; 
her  remarkable  mind  had  kept  her  body  in  a  sort  of 
sympathetic  activity,  and  at  thirty-five  she  had  the 
gracile  ease  and  self-command  of  a  girl. 

"  Ah,  Reuben,"  she  sighed,  permitting  herself  to  call 
him  by  his  first  name,  with  the  emotion  which  expressed 
itself  more  definitely  in  the  words  that  followed,  "  how 
I  envy  you  all  this  clear,  old,  homelike  place !  I  never 
come  here  without  thinking  of  my  grandfather's  farm 
in  Massachusetts,  where  I  used  to  go  every  summer 
when  I  was  a  little  girl.  If  I  had  a  place  like  this,  I 
should  never  leave  it." 

"  Well,  Mrs.  Makely,"  said  young  Camp,  "  you  can 
have  this  place  cheap,  if  you  really  want  it.  Or  almost 
any  other  place  in  the  neighborhood." 

"  Don't  say  such  a  thing !"  she  returned.  "  It  makes 
one  feel  as  if  the  foundations  of  the  great  deep  were 
giving  way.  I  don't  know  what  that  means  exactly,  but 
I  suppose  it's  equivalent  to  mislaying  George's  hatchet 
and  going  back  on  the  Declaration  generally;  and  I 
don't  like  to  hear  you  talk  so." 

Camp  seemed  to  have  lost  his  bitter  mood,  and  he 
answered,  pleasantly:  "  The  Declaration  is  all  right,  as 
far  as  it  goes,  but  it  don't  help  us  to  compete  with  the 
Western  farm  operations." 

"  Why,  you  believe  every  one  was  born  free  and 

equal,  don't  you  ?"  Mrs.  Makely  asked. 

105 


A  TRAVELED  FEOM  ALTRURIA 

"  Oh  yes,  I  believe  that ;  but—" 

"  Then  why  do  you  object  to  free  and  equal  com- 
petition V 

The  young  fellow  laughed,  and  said,  as  he  opened 
the  door  for  us :  "  Walk  right  into  the  parlor,  please. 
Mother  will  be  ready  for  you  in  a  minute."  He  added : 
"  I  guess  she's  putting  on  her  best  cap  for  you,  Mr. 
Homos.  It's  a  great  event  for  her,  your  coining  here. 
It  is  for  all  of  us.    We're  glad  to  have  you." 

"  And  I'm  glad  to  be  here,"  said  the  Altrurian,  as 
simply  as  the  other.  He  looked  about  the  best  room 
of  a  farm-house  that  had  never  adapted  itself  to  the 
tastes  or  needs  of  the  city  boarder,  and  was  as  stiffly 
repellent  in  its  upholstery  and  as  severe  in  its  decora- 
tion as  hair-cloth  chairs  and  dark-brown  wall-paper  of 
a  trellis  pattern,  with  drab  roses,  could  make  it.  The 
windows  Avere  shut  tight,  and  our  host  did  not  offer 
to  open  them.  A  fly  or  two  crossed  the  doorway  into 
the  hall,  but  made  no  attempt  to  penetrate  the  interior, 
where  we  sat  in  an  obscurity  that  left  the  high-hung 
family  photographs  on  the  walls  vague  and  uncertain. 
I  made  a  mental  note  of  it  as  a  place  where  it  would 
be  very  characteristic  to  have  a  rustic  funeral  take 
place;  and  I  was  pleased  to  have  Mrs.  Makely  drop 
into  a  sort  of  mortuary  murmur,  as  she  said :  "  I  hope 
your  mother  is  as  well  as  usual  this  morning  ?"  I  per- 
ceived that  this  murmur  was  produced  by  the  sepulchral 
influence  of  the  room. 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  Camp,  and  at  that  moment  a  door 
opened  from  the  room  across  the  hall,  and  his  sister 
seemed  to  bring  in  some  of  the  light  from  it  to  us  where 
we  sat.  She  shook  hands  with  Mrs.  Makely,  who  in- 
troduced me  to  her,  and  then  presented  the  Altrurian. 
She  bowed  very  civilly  to  me,  but  with  a  touch  of 
severity,  such  as  country  people  find  necessary  for  the 

10G 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

assertion  of  their  self-respect  with  strangers.  I  thought 
it  very  pretty,  and  instantly  saw  that  I  could  work  it 
into  some  picture  of  character;  and  I  was  not  at  all 
sorry  that  she  made  a  difference  in  favor  of  the  Altru- 
rian. 

"  Mother  will  be  so  glad  to  see  you,"  she  said  to  him, 
and,  "  Won't  you  come  right  in  V  she  added  to  us  all. 

We  followed  her  and  found  ourselves  in  a  large, 
low,  sunny  room  on  the  southeast  corner  of  the  house, 
which  had  no  doubt  once  been  the  living-room,  but 
which  was  now  given  up  to  the  bedridden  invalid ;  a 
door  opened  into  the  kitchen  behind,  where  the  tabic 
was  already  laid  for  the  midday  meal,  with  the  plates 
turned  down  in  the  country  fashion,  and  some  netting 
drawn  over  the  dishes  to  keep  the  flies  away. 

Mrs.  Makely  bustled  up  to  the  bedside  with  her 
energetic,  patronizing  cheerfulness.  "  Ah,  Mrs.  Camp, 
I  am  glad  to  see  you  looking  so  well  this  morning. 
I've  been  meaning  to  run  over  for  several  days  past, 
but  I  couldn't  find  a  moment  till  this  morning,  and  I 
knew  you  didn't  object  to  Sunday  visits."  She  took 
the  invalid's  hand  in  hers,  and,  with  the  air  of  showing 
how  little  she  felt  any  inequality  between  them,  she 
leaned  over  and  kissed  her,  where  Mrs.  Camp  sat 
propped  against  her  pillows.  She  had  a  large,  nobly 
moulded  face  of  rather  masculine  contour,  and  at  the 
same  time  the  most  motherly  look  in  the  world.  Mrs. 
Makely  bubbled  and  babbled  on,  and  every  one  waited 
patiently  till  she  had  done,  and  turned  and  said,  toward 
the  Altrurian :  "  I  have  ventured  to  bring  my  friend, 
Mr.  Homos,  with  me.  He  is  from  Altruria."  Then  she 
turned  to  me  and  said :  "  Mr.  Twelvemough  you  know 
already  through  his  delightful  books  " ;  but,  although 
she  paid  me  this  perfunctory  compliment  it  was  perfect- 
ly apparent  to  me  that  in  the  esteem  of  this  disingenuous 

107 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

woman  the  distinguished  stranger  was  a  far  more  im- 
portant person  than  the  distinguished  author.  Whether 
j\Irs.  Camp  read  my  perception  of  this  fact  in  my  face 
or  not  I  cannot  say,  but  she  was  evidently  determined 
that  I  should  not  feel  a  difference  in  her.  She  hold 
out  her  hand  to  me  first,  and  said  that  I  never  could 
know  how  many  heavy  hours  I  had  helped  to  lighten  for 
her,  and  then  she  turned  to  the  Altrurian  and  took  his 
hand.  "  Oh !"  she  said,  with  a  long,  deep-drawn  sigh, 
as  if  that  were  the  supreme  moment  of  her  life.  "  And 
are  you  really  from  Altruria  ?  It  seems  too  good  to  be 
true !"  Her  devout  look  and  her  earnest  tone  gave  the 
commonplace  words  a  quality  that  did  not  inhere  in 
them,  but  Mrs.  Makely  took  them  on  their  surface. 

"  Yes,  doesn't  it  ?"  she  made  haste  to  interpose,  be- 
fore the  Altrurian  could  say  anything.  "  That  is  just 
the  way  we  all  feel  about  it,  Mrs.  Camp.  I  assure  you, 
if  it  were  not  for  the  accounts  in  the  papers  and  the 
talk  about  it  everywhere,  I  couldn't  believe  there  was 
any  such  place  as  Altruria ;  and  if  it  were  not  for  Mr. 
Twelvemough  here — who  has  to  keep  all  his  inventions 
for  his  novels,  as  a  mere  matter  of  business  routine — I 
might  really  suspect  him  and  Mr.  Homos  of — well, 
working  us,  as  my  husband  calls  it." 

The  Altrurian  smiled  politely,  but  vaguely,  as  if  he 
had  not  quite  caught  her  meaning,  and  I  made  answer 
for  both :  "  I  am  sure,  Mrs.  Makely,  if  you  could  un- 
derstand my  peculiar  state  of  mind  about  Mr.  Homos, 
you  would  never  believe  that  I  was  in  collusion  with 
him.  I  find  him  quite  as  incredible  as  you  do.  There 
are  moments  when  he  seems  so  entirely  subjective  with 
me  that  I  feel  as  if  he  were  no  more  definite  or  tangible 
than  a  bad  conscience." 

"Exactly!"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  and  she  laughed  out 

her  delight  in  my  illustration. 

108 


A  TRAVELER  FEOM  ALTEUKIA 

The  Altrurian  must  have  perceived  that  we  were 
joking,  though  the  Camps  all  remained  soberly  silent. 
"  I  hope  it  isn't  so  bad  as  that,"  he  said,  "  though  I  have 
noticed  that  I  seem  to  affect  you  all  with  a  kind  of  mis- 
giving. I  don't  know  just  what  it  is;  but,  if  I  could 
remove  it,  I  should  be  very  glad  to  do  so." 

Mrs.  Makely  very  promptly  seized  her  chance: 
"  Well,  then,  in  the  first  place,  my  husband  and  I 
were  talking  it  over  last  night  after  we  left  you,  and 
that  was  one  of  the  things  that  kept  us  awake;  it 
turned  into  money  afterward.  It  isn't  so  much  that  a 
whole  continent,  as  big  as  Australia,  remained  undis- 
covered till  within  such  a  very  few  years,  as  it  is  the 
condition  of  things  among  you :  this  sort  of  all  living 
for  one  another,  and  not  each  one  for  himself.  My  hus- 
band says  that  is  simply  moonshine ;  such  a  thing  never 
was  and  never  can  be;  it  is  opposed  to  human  nature, 
and  would  take  away  incentive  and  all  motive  for  ex- 
ertion and  advancement  and  enterprise.  I  don't  know 
what  he  didn't  say  against  it ;  but  one  thing,  he  says  it's 
perfectly  un-American."  The  Altrurian  remained  si- 
lent, gravely  smiling,  and  Mrs.  Makely  added,  with 
her  most  engaging  little  manner :  "  I  hope  you  won't 
feel  hurt,  personally  or  patriotically,  by  what  I've  re- 
peated to  you.  I  know  my  husband  is  awfully  Philis- 
tine, though  he  is  such  a  good  fellow,  and  I  don't,  by 
any  means,  agree  with  him  on  all  those  points;  but  I 
would,  like  to  know  what  you  think  of  them.  The 
trouble  is,  Mrs.  Camp,"  she  said,  turning  to  the  in- 
valid, "  that  Mr.  Homos  is  so  dreadfully  reticent  about 
his  own  country,  and  I  am  so  curious  to  hear  of  it  at 
first  hands,  that  I  consider  it  justifiable  to  use  any 
means  to  make  him  open  up  about  it." 

"  There  is  no  offence,"  the  Altrurian  answered  for 

himself,  "  in  what  Mr.  Makely  says,  though,  from  the 
s  109 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

Altrurian  point  of  view,  there  is  a  good  deal  of  er- 
ror. 

"  Does  it  seem  so  strange  to  you,"  be  asked,  address- 
ing himself  to  Mrs.  Camp,  "  that  people  should  found  a 
civilization  on  the  idea  of  living  for  one  another  in- 
stead of  each  for  himself  ?" 

"  No  indeed !"  she  answered.  "  Poor  people  have 
always  had  to  live  that  way,  or  they  could  not  have 
lived  at  all." 

"  That  was  what  I  understood  your  porter  to  say 
last  night,"  said  the  Altrurian  to  me.  He  added,  to 
the  company  generally :  "  I  suppose  that  even  in  Amer- 
ica there  are  more  poor  people  than  there  are  rich 
people  ?" 

"  Well,  I  don't  know  about  that,"  I  said.  "  I  sup- 
pose there  are  more  people  independently  rich  than 
there  are  people  independently  poor." 

"  We  will  let  that  formulation  of  it  stand.  If  it  is 
true,  I  do  not  see  why  the  Altrurian  system  should  be 
considered  so  very  un-American.  Then,  as  to  whether 
there  is  or  ever  was  really  a  practical  altruism,  a  civic 
expression  of  it,  I  think  it  cannot  be  denied  that  among 
the  first  Christians,  those  who  immediately  followed 
Christ,  and  might  be  supposed  to  be  directly  influenced 
by  His  life,  there  was  an  altruism  practised  as  radical 
as  that  which  we  have  organized  into  a  national  polity 
and  a  working  economy  in  Altruria." 

"  Ah,  but  you  know,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  the  air 
of  advancing  a  point  not  to  be  put  aside,  "  they  had 
to  drop  that.  It  was  a  dead  failure.  They  found  that 
they  couldn't  make  it  go  at  all  among  cultivated  peo- 
ple, and  that,  if  Christianity  was  to  advance,  they  would 
have  to  give  up  all  that  crankish  kind  of  idolatry  of  the 
mere  letter.  At  any  rate,"  she  went  on,  with  the  satis- 
faction we  all  feel  in  getting  an  opponent  into  close 

110 


A  TRAVELER  FKOM  ALTRURIA 

quarters,  "  you  must  confess  that  there  is  a  much  greater 
play  of  individuality  here." 

Before  the  Altrurian  could  reply,  young  Camp  said : 
"  If  you  want  to  see  American  individuality,  the  real, 
simon-pure  article,  you  ought  to  go  down  to  one  of  our 
big  factory  towns  and  look  at  the  mill-hands  coming 
home  in  droves  after  a  day's  work,  young  girls  and  old 
women,  boys  and  men,  all  fluffed  over  with  cotton,  and 
so  dead  tired  that  they  can  hardly  walk.  They  come 
shambling  along  with  all  the  individuality  of  a  flock 
of  sheep." 

"  Some,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  heroically,  as  if  she  were 
one  of  these,  "  must  be  sacrificed.  Of  course,  some  are 
not  so  individual  as  others.  A  great  deal  depends  upon 
temperament." 

"  A  great  deal  more  depends  upon  capital,"  said 
Camp,  with  an  offensive  laugh.  "  If  you  have  capital 
in  America,  you  can  have  individuality ;  if  you  haven't, 
you  can't." 

His  sister,  who  had  not  taken  part  in  the  talk  before, 
said,  demurely :  "  It  seems  to  me  you've  got  a  good  deal 
of  individuality,  Reub,  and  you  haven't  got  a  great 
deal  of  capital,  either,"  and  the  two  young  people 
laughed  together. 

Mrs.  Makely  was  one  of  those  fatuous  women  whose 
eagerness  to  make  a  point  excludes  the  consideration 
even  of  their  own  advantage.  "  I'm  sure,"  she  said,  as 
if  speaking  for  the  upper  classes,  "  we  haven't  got  any 
individuality  at  all.  We  are  as  like  as  so  many  peas 
or  pins.  In  fact,  you  have  to  be  so  in  society.  If  you 
keep  asserting  your  own  individuality  too  much,  people 
avoid  you.     It's  very  vulgar  and  the  greatest  bore." 

"  Then  you  don't  find  individuality  so  desirable,  after 

all,"  said  the  Altrurian. 

"  I  perfectly  detest  it!"  cried  the  lady,  and  evidently 

ill 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

she  had  not  the  least  notion  where  she  was  in  the  argu- 
ment. "  For  my  part,  I'm  never  happy  except  when 
I've  forgotten  myself  and  the  whole  individual  bother." 

Her  declaration  seemed  somehow  to  close  the  incident, 
and  we  were  all  silent  a  moment,  w7hich  I  employed 
in  looking  about  the  room,  and  taking  in  with  my 
literary  sense  the  simplicity  and  even  bareness  of  its 
furnishing.  There  was  the  bed  where  the  invalid  lay, 
and  near  the  head  a  table  with  a  pile  of  books  and  a 
kerosene-lamp  on  it,  and  I  decided  that  she  was  a  good 
deal  wakeful,  and  that  she  read  by  that  lamp  when  she 
could  not  sleep  at  night.  Then  there  were  the  hard 
chairs  we  sat  on,  and  some  home-made  hooked  rugs, 
in  rounds  and  ovals,  scattered  about  the  clean  floor ; 
there  was  a  small  melodeon  pushed  against  the  wall ; 
the  windows  had  paper  shades,  and  I  recalled  that  I 
had  not  seen  any  blinds  on  the  outside  of  the  house. 
Over  the  head  of  the  bed  hung  a  cavalryman's  sword, 
with  its  belt — the  sword  that  Mrs.  ]\Iakely  had  spoken 
of.  It  struck  me  as  a  room  where  a  great  many  things 
might  have  happened,  and  I  said :  "  You  can't  think, 
Mrs.  Camp,  how  glad  I  am  to  see  the  inside  of  your 
house.    It  seems  to  me  so  typical." 

A  pleased  intelligence  showed  itself  in  her  face,  and 
she  answered :  "  Yes,  it  is  a  real  old-fashioned  farm- 
house. We  have  never  taken  boarders,  and  so  we  have 
kept  it  as  it  was  built  pretty  much,  and  only  made  such 
changes  in  it  as  we  needed  or  wanted  for  ourselves." 

"  It's  a  pity,"  I  went  on,  following  up  what  I  thought 
a  fortunate  lead,  "  that  we  city  people  see  so  little  of 
the  farming  life  when  wre  come  into  the  country.  I  have 
been  here  now  for  several  seasons,  and  this  is  the  first 
time  I  have  been  inside  a  farmer's  house." 

"  Is  it  possible !"  cried  the  Altrurian,  with  an  air 
of  utter  astonishment;  and,  when  I  found  the  fact  ap- 

112 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

peared  so  singular  to  him,  I  began  to  be  rather  proud 
of  its  singularity. 

"  Yes,  I  suppose  that  most  city  people  come  and  go, 
year  after  year,  in  the  country,  and  never  make  any 
sort  of  acquaintance  with  the  people  who  live  there  the 
year  round.  We  keep  to  ourselves  in  the  hotels,  or,  if 
we  go  out  at  all,  it  is  to  make  a  call  upon  some  city 
cottager,  and  so  we  do  not  get  out  of  the  vicious  circle 
of  our  own  over-intimacy  with  ourselves  and  our  igno- 
rance of  others." 

"  And  you  regard  that  as  a  great  misfortune  ?"  asked 
the  Altrurian. 

"  Why,  it's  inevitable.  There  is  nothing  to  bring  us 
together,  unless  it's  some  happy  accident,  like  the  pres- 
ent. But  we  don't  have  a  traveler  from  Altruria  to  ex- 
ploit every  day,  and  so  we  have  no  business  to  come  into 
people's  houses." 

"  You  would  have  been  welcome  in  ours  long  ago, 
Mr.  Twelvemough,"  said  Mrs.  Camp. 

"  But,  excuse  me,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  what  you 
say  really  seems  dreadful  to  me.  Why,  it  is  as  if  you 
were  not  the  same  race  or  kind  of  men !" 

"  Yes,"  I  answered.  "  It  has  sometimes  seemed  to 
me  as  if  our  big  hotel  there  were  a  ship  anchored  off 
some  strange  coast.  The  inhabitants  come  out  with 
supplies,  and  carry  on  their  barter  with  the  ship's 
steward,  and  we  sometimes  see  them  over  the  side,  but 
we  never  speak  to  them  or  have  anything  to  do  with 
them.  We  sail  away  at  the  close  of  the  season,  and 
that  is  the  end  of  it  till  next  summer." 

The  Altrurian  turned  to  Mrs.  Camp.  "  And  how 
do  you  look  at  it  ?    How  does  it  seem  to  you  V 

"  I  don't  believe  we  have  thought  about  it  very  much ; 
but,  now  that  Mr.  Twelvemough  has  spoken  of  it,  I  can 

see  that  it  does  look  that  wav.     And  it  seems  very 

113 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

strange,  doesn't  it,  for  we  are  all  the  same  people,  and 
have  the  same  language  and  religion  and  country — the 
country  that  my  husband  fought  for  and,  I  suppose  I 
may  say,  died  for ;  he  was  never  the  same  man  after  the 
war.  It  does  appear  as  if  we  had  some  interests  in 
common,  and  might  find  it  out  if  we  ever  came  to- 
gether." 

"  It's  a  great  advantage,  the  city  people  going  into 
the  country  so  much  as  they  do  now,"  said  Mrs.  Makely. 
"  They  bring  five  million  dollars  into  the  State  of  New 
Hampshire,  alone,  every  summer." 

She  looked  round  for  the  general  approval  which  this 
fact  merited,  and  young  Camp  said :  "  And  it  shows 
how  worthless  the  natives  are,  that  they  can't  make  both 
ends  meet,  with  all  that  money,  but  have  to  give  up  their 
farms  and  go  West,  after  all.  I  suppose  you  think  it 
comes  from  wanting  buggies  and  pianos." 

"  Well,  it  certainly  comes  from  something,"  said  Mrs. 
Makely,  with  the  courage  of  her  convictions. 

She  was  evidently  not  going  to  be  put  down  by  that 
sour  young  fellow,  and  I  was  glad  of  it,  though  I  must 
say  I  thought  the  thing  she  left  to  rankle  in  his  mind 
from  our  former  meeting  had  not  been  said  in  very  good 
taste.  I  thought,  too,  that  she  would  not  fare  best  in 
any  encounter  of  vats  with  him,  and  I  rather  trembled 
for  the  result.  I  said,  to  relieve  the  strained  situation : 
"  I  wish  there  was  some  way  of  our  knowing  each  other 
better.  I'm  sure  there's  a  great  deal  of  good-will  on  both 
sides." 

"  No,  there  isn't,"  said  Camp,  "  or  at  least  I  can 
answer  for  our  side  that  there  isn't.  You  come  into  the 
country  to  get  as  much  for  your  money  as  you  can,  and 
we  mean  to  let  you  have  as  little  as  we  can.  That's  the 
whole  story,  and  if  Mr.  Homos  believes  anything  dif- 
ferent, he's  very  much  mistaken." 

114 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  I  hadn't  formed  any  conclusion  in  regard  to  the 
matter,  which  is  quite  new  to  me,"  said  the  Altrurian, 
mildly.  "  But  why  is  there  no  basis  of  mutual  kind- 
ness between  you  ?" 

"  Because  it's  like  everything  else  with  us ;  it's  a  ques- 
tion of  supply  and  demand,  and  there  is  no  room  for 
any  mutual  kindness  in  a  question  of  that  kind.  Even 
if  there  were,  there  is  another  thing  that  would  kill  it. 
The  summer  folks,  as  we  call  them,  look  down  on  the 
natives,  as  they  call  us,  and  we  know  it." 

"  Now,  Mr.  Camp,  I  am  sure  that  you  cannot  say  I 
look  down  on  the  natives,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  an 
air  of  argument. 

The  young  fellow  laughed.  "  Oh  yes,  you  do,"  he 
said,  not  unamiably,  and  he  added,  "  and  you've  got 
the  right  to.  We're  not  fit  to  associate  with  you,  and 
you  know  it,  and  we  know  it.  You've  got  more  money, 
and  you've  got  nicer  clothes,  and  you've  got  prettier 
manners.  You  talk  about  things  that  most  natives  never 
heard  of,  and  you  care  for  things  they  never  saw.  I 
know  it's  the  custom  to  pretend  differently,  but  I'm 
not  going  to  pretend  differently." 

I  recalled  what  my  friend  the  banker  said  about 
throwing  away  cant,  and  I  asked  myself  if  I  were 
in  the  presence  of  some  such  free  spirit  again.  I 
did  not  see  how  young  Camp  could  afford  it;  but 
then  I  reflected  that  he  had  really  nothing  to  lose 
by  it,  for  he  did  not  expect  to  make  anything  out 
of  us;  Mrs.  Makely  would  probably  not  give  up  his 
sister  as  seamstress  if  the  girl  continued  to  work  so 
well  and  so  cheaply  as  she  said. 

"  Suppose,"  he  went  on,  "  that  some  old  native  took 

you  at  your  word,  and  came  to  call  upon  you  at  the 

hotel,  with  his  wife,  just  as  one  of  the  city  cottagers 

would  do  if  he  wanted  to  make  your  acquaintance?" 

115 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  I  should  be  perfectly  delighted,"  said  Mrs.  Make- 
ly, "  and  I  should  receive  them  with  the  greatest  pos- 
sible cordiality." 

"  The  same  kind  of  cordiality  that  you  would  show  to 
the  cottagers  ?" 

"  I  suppose  that  I  should  feel  that  I  had  more  in  com- 
mon with  the  cottagers.  We  should  be  interested  in  the 
same  things,  and  we  should  probably  know  the  same 
people  and  have  more  to  talk  about — " 

"  You  would  both  belong  to  the  same  class,  and  that 
tells  the  whole  story.  If  you  were  out  West,  and  the 
owner  of  one  of  those  big  twenty-thousand-acre  farms 
called  on  you  with  his  wife,  would  you  act  toward  them 
as  you  would  toward  our  natives  ?  You  wouldn't.  You 
would  all  be  rich  people  together,  and  you  would  under- 
stand one  another  because  you  had  money." 

"  Now,  that  is  not  so,"  Mrs.  Makely  interrupted. 
"  There  are  plenty  of  rich  people  one  wouldn't  wish  to 
know  at  all,  and  who  really  can't  get  into  society — who 
are  ignorant  and  vulgar.  And  then,  when  you  come  to 
money,  I  don't  see  but  what  country  people  are  as  glad 
to  get  it  as  anybody." 

"  Oh,  gladder,"  said  the  young  man. 

"  Well  ?"  demanded  Mrs.  Makely,  as  if  this  were  a 
final  stroke  of  logic.  The  young  man  did  not  reply, 
and  Mrs.  Makely  continued :  "  Now  I  will  appeal  to 
your  sister  to  say  whether  she  has  ever  seen  any  dif- 
ference in  my  manner  toward  her  from  what  I  show  to 
all  the  young  ladies  in  the  hotel."  The  young  girl 
flushed  and  seemed  reluctant  to  answer.  "  Why,  Liz- 
zie !"  cried  Mrs.  Makely,  and  her  tone  showed  that  she 
was  really  hurt. 

The  scene  appeared  to  me  rather  cruel,  and  I  glanced 

at  Mrs.  Camp  with  an  expectation  that  she  would  say 

something  to  relieve  it.     But  she  did  not.     Her  large, 

116 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

benevolent  face  expressed  only  a  quiet  interest  in  the 
discussion. 

"  You  know  very  well,  Mrs.  Makely,"  said  the  girl, 
"  you  don't  regard  me  as  you  do  the  young  ladies  in  the 
hotel." 

There  was  no  resentment  in  her  voice  or  look,  but 
only  a  sort  of  regret,  as  if,  but  for  this  grievance,  she 
could  have  loved  the  woman  from  whom  she  had  prob- 
ably had  much  kindness.  The  tears  came  into  ]\Irs. 
Makely's  eyes,  and  she  turned  toward  Mrs.  Camp. 
"  And  is  this  the  way  you  all  feel  toward  us  V  she 
asked. 

"  Why  shouldn't  we  ?"  asked  the  invalid,  in  her  turn. 
"  But,  no,  it  isn't  the  way  all  the  country  people  feel. 
Many  of  them  feel  as  you  would  like  to  have  them  feel ; 
but  that  is  because  they  do  not  think.  When  they  think, 
they  feel  as  we  do.  But  I  don't  blame  you.  You  can't 
help  yourselves  any  more  than  we  can.  We're  all  bound 
up  together  in  that,  at  least." 

At  this  apparent  relenting  Mrs.  Makely  tricked  her 
beams  a  little,  and  said,  plaintively,  as  if  offering  her- 
self for  further  condolence:  "Yes,  that  is  what  that 
woman  at  the  little  shanty  back  there  said:  some  have 
to  be  rich,  and  some  have  to  be  poor ;  it  takes  all  kinds 
to  make  a  world." 

"  How  would  you  like  to  be  one  of  those  that  have 
to  be  poor  ?"  asked  young  Camp,  with  an  evil  grin. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  unexpected 
spirit ;  "  but  I  am  sure  that  I  should  respect  the  feelings 
of  all,  rich  or  poor." 

"I  am  sorry  if  we  have  hurt  yours,  Mrs.  Makely," 
said  Mrs.  Camp,  with  dignity.  "  You  asked  us  certain 
questions,  and  we  thought  you  wished  us  to  reply  truth- 
fully.    We  could  not  answer  you  with  smooth  things." 

"  But  sometimes  you  do,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  and  the 

117 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

tears  stood  in  her  eyes  again.  "  And  you  know  how 
fond  I  am  of  you  all !" 

Mrs.  Camp  wore  a  bewildered  look.  "  Perhaps  we 
have  said  more  than  we  ought.  But  I  couldn't  help  it, 
and  I  don't  see  how  the  children  could,  when  you  asked 
them  here,  before  Mr.  Homos." 

I  glanced  at  the  Altrurian,  sitting  attentive  and  si- 
lent,, and  a  sudden  misgiving  crossed  my  mind  concern- 
ing him.  Was  he  really  a  man,  a  human  entity,  a 
personality  like  ourselves,  or  was  he  merely  a  sort  of 
spiritual  solvent,  sent  for  the  moment  to  precipitate 
whatever  sincerity  there  was  in  us,  and  show  us  what 
the  truth  was  concerning  our  relations  to  one  another  ? 
It  was  a  fantastic  conception,  but  I  thought  it  was  one 
that  I  might  employ  in  some  sort  of  purely  romantic 
design,  and  I  was  professionally  grateful  for  it.  I  said, 
with  a  humorous  gayety :  "  Yes,  we  all  seem  to  have 
been  compelled  to  be  much  more  honest  than  we  like; 
and  if  Mr.  Homos  is  going  to  write  an  account  of  his 
travels  when  he  gets  home,  he  can't  accuse  us  of  hy- 
pocrisy, at  any  rate.  And  I  always  used  to  think  it 
was  one  of  our  virtues!  What  with  Mr.  Camp,  here, 
and  my  friend  the  banker  at  the  hotel,  I  don't  think 
he'll  have  much  reason  to  complain  even  of  our  reti- 
cence." 

"  Well,  whatever  he  says  of  us,"  sighed  Mrs.  Makely, 
with  a  pious  glance  at  the  sword  over  the  bed,  "  he  will 
have  to  say  that,  in  spite  of  our  divisions  and  classes, 
we  are  all  Americans,  and,  if  we  haven't  the  same 
opinions  and  ideas  on  minor  matters,  we  all  have  the 
same  country." 

"  I    don't    know    about   that,"    came    from    Reuben 

Camp,   with  shocking  promptness.      "  I   don't  believe 

we  all  have  the  same  country.     America  is  one  thing 

for  you,  and  it's  quite  another  thing  for  us.     America 

118 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

means  ease  and  comfort  and  amusement  for  you,  year 
in  and  year  out,  and  if  it  means  work,  it's  work  that 
you  wish  to  do.  For  us,  America  means  work  that  we 
have  to  do,  and  hard  work  all  the  time  if  we're  going 
to  make  both  ends  meet.  It  means  liberty  for  you ; 
but  what  liberty  has  a  man  got  who  doesn't  know  where 
his  next  meal  is  coming  from  ?  Once  I  was  in  a  strike, 
when  I  was  working  on  the  railroad,  and  I've  seen  men 
come  and  give  up  their  liberty  for  a  chance  to  earn  their 
family's  living.  They  knew  they  were  right,  and  that 
they  ought  to  have  stood  up  for  their  rights;  but  they 
had  to  lie  down  and  lick  the  hand  that  fed  them.  Yes, 
we  are  all  Americans,  but  I  guess  we  haven't  all  got  the 
same  country,  Mrs.  !Makely.  What  sort  of  a  country  has 
a  blacklisted  man  got  ?" 

"  A  blacklisted  man  V  she  repeated.  "  I  don't  know 
what  you  mean." 

"  Well,  a  kind  of  man  I've  seen  in  the  mill  towns, 
that  the  bosses  have  all  got  on  their  books  as  a  man 
that  isn't  to  be  given  work  on  any  account;  that's  to 
be  punished  with  hunger  and  cold,  and  turned  into  the 
street,  for  having  offended  them ;  and  that's  to  be  made 
to  suffer  through  his  helpless  family  for  having  offended 
them." 

"  Excuse  me,  ]\Ir.  Camp,"  I  interposed,  "  but  isn't 
a  blacklisted  man  usually  a  man  who  has  made  him- 
self prominent  in  some  labor  trouble  ?" 

"  Yes,"  the  young  fellow  answered,  without  seeming 
sensible  of  the  point  I  had  made. 

"  Ah !"  I  returned.  "  Then  you  can  hardly  blame 
the  employers  for  taking  it  out  of  him  in  any  way 
they  can.     That's  human  nature." 

"Good  heavens!"  the  Altrurian  cried  out.     "Is  it 

possible  that  in  America  it  is  human  nature  to  take 

away  the  bread  of  a  man's  family  because  he  has  gone 

119 


A  TRAVELER  EROM  ALTRURIA 

counter  to  your  interest  or  pleasure  on  some  economical 
question  8" 

"  Well,  Mr.  Twelvemough  seems  to  think  so,"  sneer- 
ed the  young  man.  "  But  whether  it's  human  nature 
or  not,  it's  a  fact  that  they  do  it,  and  you  can  guess  how 
much  a  blacklisted  man  must  love  the  country  where 
such  a  thing  can  happen  to  him.  What  should  you  call 
such  a  thing  as  blacklisting  in  Altruria  ?" 

"  Oh  yes,"  Mrs.  Makely  pleaded,  "  do  let  us  get  him 
to  talking  about  Altruria  on  any  terms.  I  think  all 
this  about  the  labor  question  is  so  tiresome;  don't  you, 
Mrs.  Camp?" 

Mrs.  Camp  did  not  answer;  but  the  Altrurian  said, 
in  reply  to  her  son :  "  We  should  have  no  name  for 
such  a  thing,  for  with  us  such  a  thing  would  be  im- 
possible. There  is  no  crime  so  heinous  with  us  that 
the  punishment  would  take  away  the  criminal's  chance 
of  earning  his  living." 

"  Oh,  if  he  was  a  criminal,"  said  young  Camp,  "  he 
would  be  all  right  here.  The  state  would  give  him  a 
chance  to  earn  his  living  then." 

"  But  if  he  had  no  other  chance  of  earning  his  liv- 
ing, and  had  committed  no  offence  against  the  laws — " 

"  Then  the  state  would  let  him  take  to  the  road — like 
that  fellow." 

He  pulled  aside  the  shade  of  the  window  where  he 
sat,  and  we  saw  pausing  before  the  house,  and  glancing 
doubtfully  at  the  doorstep,  where  the  dog  lay,  a  vile  and 
loathsome  -  looking  tramp,  a  blot  upon  the  sweet  and 
wholesome  landscape,  a  scandal  to  the  sacred  day.  His 
rags  burlesqued  the  form  which  they  did  not  wholly 
hide;  his  broken  shoes  were  covered  with  dust;  his 
coarse  hair  came  in  a  plume  through  his  tattered  hat; 
his  red,  sodden  face,  at  once  fierce  and  timid,  was  rusty 
with  a  fortnight's  beard.     He  offended  the  eye  like  a 

120 


A  TKAVELEE  FROM  ALTKUKIA 

visible  stench,  and  the  wretched  carrion  seemed  to 
shrink  away  from  our  gaze  as  if  he  were  aware  of  his 
loathsomeness. 

"  Keally,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  "  I  thought  those  fel- 
lows were  arrested  now.  It  is  too  bad  to  leave  them 
at  large.  They  are  dangerous."  Young  Camp  left 
the  room,  and  we  saw  him  going  out  toward  the  tramp. 

"  Ah,  that's  quite  right,"  said  the  lady.  "  I  hope 
Reuben  is  going  to  send  him  about  his  business.  Why, 
surely,  he's  not  going  to  feed  the  horrid  creature !"  she 
added,  as  Camp,  after  a  moment's  parley  with  the 
tramp,  turned  with  him  and  disappeared  round  a  cor- 
ner of  the  house.  "  Now,  Mrs.  Camp,  I  think  that 
is  really  a  very  bad  example.  It's  encouraging  them. 
Very  likely  he'll  go  to  sleep  in  your  barn,  and  set  it  on 
fire  with  his  pipe.  What  do  you  do  with  tramps  in 
Altruria,  Mr.  Homos  ?" 

The  Altrurian  seemed  not  to  have  heard  her.  He 
said  to  Mrs.  Camp :  "  Then  I  understand  from  some- 
thing your  son  let  fall  that  he  has  not  always  been  at 
home  with  you  here.  Does  he  reconcile  himself  easily 
to  the  country  after  the  excitement  of  town  life?  I 
have  read  that  the  cities  in  America  are  draining  the 
country  of  the  young  people." 

"  I  don't  think  he  was  sorry  to  come  home,"  said 

the  mother,  with  a  touch  of  fond  pride.     "  But  there 

was  no  choice  for  him  after  his  father  died;  he  was 

always  a  good  boy,  and  he  has  not  made  us  feel  that 

we    were    keeping    him    away    from    anything    better. 

When  his  father  was  alive  we  let  him  go,  because  then 

we  were  not  so  dependent,  and  I  wished  him  to  try 

his  fortune  in  the  world,  as  all  boys  long  to  do.     But 

he  is  rather  peculiar,  and  he  seems  to  have  got  quite 

enough  of  the  world.     To  be  sure,  I  don't  suppose  he's 

seen  the  brightest  side  of  it.     He  first  went  to  work  in 

121 


A  TKAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

the  mills  down  at  Ponkwasset,  but  he  was  '  laid  off ' 
there  when  the  hard  times  came  and  there  was  so  much 
overproduction,  and  he  took  a  job  of  railroading,  and 
was  braking  on  a  freight-train  when  his  father  left 
us." 

Mrs.  Makely  said,  smiling:  "No,  I  don't  think  that 
was  the  brightest  outlook  in  the  world.  No  wonder 
he  has  brought  back  such  gloomy  impressions.  I  am 
sure  that  if  he  could  have  seen  life  under  brighter 
auspices  he  would  not  have  the  ideas  he  has." 

"  Very  likely,"  said  the  mother,  dryly.  "  Our  ex- 
periences have  a  great  deal  to  do  with  forming  our 
opinions.  But  I  am  not  dissatisfied  with  my  son's 
ideas.  I  suppose  Reuben  got  a  good  many  of  his  ideas 
from  his  father:  he's  his  father  all  over  again.  My 
husband  thought  slavery  was  wrong,  and  he  went  into 
the  war  to  fight  against  it.  He  used  to  say  when  the 
war  was  over  that  the  negroes  were  emancipated,  but 
slavery  was  not  abolished  yet." 

"  What  in  the  world  did  he  mean  by  that  ?"  demanded 
Mrs.  Makely. 

"  Something  you  wouldn't  understand  as  we  do.  I 
tried  to  carry  on  the  farm  after  he  first  went,  and  be- 
fore Reuben  was  large  enough  to  help  me  much  and 
ought  to  be  in  school,  and  I  suppose  I  overdid.  At 
any  rate,  that  was  when  I  had  my  first  shock  of  paraly- 
sis. I  never  was  very  strong,  and  I  presume  my  health 
was  weakened  by  my  teaching  school  so  much,  and 
studying,  before  I  was  married.  But  that  doesn't  mat- 
ter now,  and  hasn't  for  many  a  year.  The  place  was 
clear  of  debt  then,  but  I  had  to  get  a  mortgage  put  on 
it.  The  savings-bank  down  in  the  village  took  it,  and 
we've  been  paying  the  interest  ever  since.  My  husband 
died  paying  it,  and  my  son  will  pay  it  all  my  life,  and 
then  I  suppose  the  bank  will  foreclose.     The  treasurer 

122 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

was  an  old  playmate  of  my  husband's,  and  he  said  that 
as  long  as  either  of  us  lived  the  mortgage  could  lie." 

"How  splendid  of  him!"  said  Mrs.  Makely.  "I 
should  think  you  had  been  very  fortunate." 

"  I  said  that  you  would  not  see  it  as  we  do,"  said  the 
invalid,  patiently. 

The  Altrurian  asked :  "  Are  there  mortgages  on  many 
of  the  farms  in  the  neighborhood  ?" 

"  Nearly  all,"  said  Mrs.  Camp.  "  We  seem  to  own 
them,  but  in  fact  they  own  us." 

Mrs.  Makely  hastened  to  say :  "  My  husband  thinks 
it's  the  best  way  to  have  your  property.  If  you  mort- 
gage it  close  up,  you  have  all  your  capital  free,  and 
you  can  keep  turning  it  over.  That's  what  you  ought 
to  do,  Mrs.  Camp.  But  what  was  the  slavery  that  Cap- 
tain Camp  said  was  not  abolished  yet  ?" 

The  invalid  looked  at  her  a  moment  without  reply- 
ing, and  just  then  the  door  of  the  kitchen  opened,  and 
Young  Camp  came  in  and  began  to  gather  some  food 
from  the  table  on  a  plate. 

"  Why  don't  you  bring  him  to  the  table,  Reub  ?"  his 
sister  called  to  him. 

"  Oh,  he  says  he'd  rather  not  come  in,  as  long  as  we 
have  company.  He  says  he  isn't  dressed  for  dinner ; 
left  his  spike-tail  in  the  city." 

The  young  man  laughed,  and  his  sister  with  him. 


VIII 

Young  Camp  carried  out  the  plate  of  victuals  to  the 
tramp,  and  Mrs.  Makely  said  to  his  mother :  "  I  suppose 
you  would  make  the  tramp  do  some  sort  of  work  to 
earn  his  breakfast  on  week-days  ?" 

"  Not  always,"  Mrs.  Camp  replied.  "  Do  the  board- 
ers at  the  hotel  always  work  to  earn  their  breakfast  ?" 

"  No,  certainly  not,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  the 
sharpness  of  offence.    "  But  they  always  pay  for  it." 

"  I  don't  think  that  paying  for  a  thing  is  earning  it. 
Perhaps  some  one  else  earned  the  money  that  pays  for 
it.  But  I  believe  there  is  too  much  work  in  the  world. 
If  I  were  to  live  my  life  over  again,  I  should  not  work 
half  so  hard.  My  husband  and  I  took  this  place  when 
we  were  young  married  people,  and  began  working  to 
pay  for  it.  We  wanted  to  feel  that  it  was  ours,  that 
we  owned  it,  and  that  our  children  should  own  it  after- 
ward. We  both  worked  all  day  long  like  slaves,  and 
many  a  moonlight  night  we  were  up  till  morning,  al- 
most, gathering  the  stones  from  our  fields  and  burying 
them  in  deep  graves  that  we  had  dug  for  them.  But 
we  buried  our  youth  and  strength  and  health  in  those 
graves,  too,  and  what  for?  I  don't  own  the  farm  that 
we  worked  so  hard  to  pay  for,  and  my  children  won't. 
That  is  what  it  has  all  come  to.  We  were  rightly 
punished  for  our  greed,  I  suppose.  Perhaps  no  one 
has  a  right  to  own  any  portion  of  the  earth.  Sometimes 
I  think  so,  but  my  husband  and  I  earned  this  farm,  and 
now  the  savings-bank  owns  it.      That  seems  strange, 

124 


A  TKAVELEK  FEOM  ALTRURIA 

doesn't  it  ?  I  suppose  you'll  say  that  the  bank  paid  for 
it.  Well,  perhaps  so ;  but  the  bank  didn't  earn  it. 
When  I  think  of  that  I  don't  always  think  that  a  per- 
son who  pays  for  his  breakfast  has  the  best  right  to  a 
breakfast." 

I  could  see  the  sophistry  of  all  this,  but  I  had  not 
the  heart  to  point  it  out ;  I  felt  the  pathos  of  it,  too. 
Mrs.  Makely  seemed  not  to  see  the  one  nor  to  feel  the 
other  very  distinctly.  "  Yes,  but  surely,"  she  said,  "  if 
you  give  a  tramp  his  breakfast  without  making  him 
work  for  it,  you  must  see  that  it  is  encouraging  idle- 
ness.   And  idleness  is  very  corrupting — the  sight  of  it." 

"  You  mean  to  the  country  people  ?  Well,  they  have 
to  stand  a  good  deal  of  that.  The  summer  folks  that 
spend  four  or  five  months  of  the  year  here  don't  seem 
to  do  anything  from  morning  till  night." 

"Ah,  but  you  must  recollect  that  they  are  resting! 
You  have  no  idea  how  hard  they  all  work  in  town  dur- 
ing the  winter,"  Mrs.  Makely  urged,  with  an  air  of 
argument. 

"  Perhaps  the  tramps  are  resting,  too.  At  any  rate, 
I  don't  think  the  sight  of  idleness  in  rags,  and  begging 
at  back  doors,  is  very  corrupting  to  the  country  people ; 
I  never  heard  of  a  single  tramp  who  had  started  from 
the  country;  they  all  come  from  the  cities.  It's  the 
other  kind  of  idleness  that  tempts  our  young  people. 
The  only  tramps  that  my  son  says  he  ever  envies  are 
the  well-dressed,  strong  young  fellows  from  town  that 
go  tramping  through  the  mountains  for  exercise  every 
summer." 

The  ladies  both  paused.  They  seemed  to  have  got 
to  the  end  of  their  tether;  at  least,  Mrs.  Makely  had 
apparently  nothing  else  to  advance,  and  I  said,  lightly : 
"But  that  is  just  the  kind  of  tramps  that  Mir.  Homos 
would  most  disapprove  of.  He  says  that  in  Altruria 
9  125 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRUR1A 

they  would  consider  exercise  for  exercise'  sake  a  wicked 
waste  of  force  and  little  short  of  lunacy." 

I  thought  my  exaggeration  might  provoke  him  to 
denial,  but  lie  seemed  not  to  have  found  it  unjust. 
"  Why,  you  know,"  he  said  to  Mrs.  Camp,  "  in  Altru- 
ria  every  one  works  with  his  hands,  so  that  the  hard 
work  shall  not  all  fall  to  any  one  class;  and  this  manu- 
al labor  of  each  is  sufficient  to  keep  the  body  in  health, 
as  well  as  to  earn  a  living.  After  the  three  hours' 
Avork,  which  constitutes  a  day's  work  with  us,  is  done, 
the  young  people  have  all  sorts  of  games  and  sports, 
and  they  carry  them  as  late  into  life  as  the  tempera- 
ment of  each  demands.  But  what  I  was  saying  to  Mr. 
Twelvemough — perhaps  I  did  not  make  myself  clear 
— was  that  we  should  regard  the  sterile  putting  forth 
of  strength  in  exercise,  if  others  were  each  day  worn 
out  with  hard  manual  labor,  as  insane  or  immoral. 
But  I  can  account  for  it  differently  with  you,  because 
I  understand  that  in  your  conditions  a  person  of  leisure 
could  not  do  any  manual  labor  without  taking  away  the 
work  of  some  one  who  needed  it  to  live  by;  and  could 
not  even  relieve  an  overworked  laborer,  and  give  him 
the  money  for  the  work,  without  teaching  him  habits  of 
idleness.  In  Altruria  we  can  all  keep  ourselves  well 
by  doing  each  his  share  of  hard  work,  and  we  can  help 
those  who  are  exhausted,  when  such  a  thing  happens, 
without  injuring  them  materially  or  morally." 

Young  Camp  entered  at  this  moment,  and  the  Altru- 
rian  hesitated.  "  Oh,  do  go  on !"  Mrs.  Makely  en- 
treated. She  added  to  Camp :  "  We've  got  him  to  talk- 
ing about  Altruria  at  last,  and  we  wouldn't  have  him 
stopped  for  worlds." 

The  Altrurian  looked  around  at  all  our  faces,  and 
no  doubt  read  our  eager  curiosity  in  them.  lie  smiled 
and  said :  "  I  shall  be  very  glad,  I'm  sure.     But  I  do 

126 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

not  think  you  will  find  anything  so  remarkable  in  our 
civilization,  if  you  will  conceive  of  it  as  the  outgrowth 
of  the  neighborly  instinct.  In  fact,  neighborliness  is 
the  essence  of  Altrurianism.  If  you  will  imagine  hav- 
ing the  same  feeling  toward  all,"  he  explained  to  M  re. 
Makcly,  "  as  you  have  toward  your  next-door  neigh- 
bor—" 

"  My  next-door  neighbor !"  she  cried.  "  But  I  don't 
know  the  people  next  door!  We  live  in  a  large  apart- 
ment house,  some  forty  families,  and  I  assure  you  I  do 
not  know  a  soul  among  them." 

He  looked  at  her  with  a  puzzled  air,  and  she  con- 
tinued: "Sometimes  it  does  seem  rather  hard.  One 
day  the  people  on  the  same  landing  with  us  lost  one 
of  their  children,  and  I  should  never  have  been  a  whit 
the  wiser  if  my  cook  hadn't  happened  to  mention  it. 
The  servants  all  know  each  other;  they  meet  in  the 
back  elevator,  and  get  acquainted.  I  don't  encourage 
it.  You  can't  tell  what  kind  of  families  they  belong 
to." 

"  But  surely,"  the  Altrurian  persisted,  "  you  have 
friends  in  the  city  whom  you  think  of  as  your  neigh- 
bors?" 

"  Xo,  I  can't  say  that  I  have,"  said  Mrs.  Makely. 
"  I  have  my  visiting-list,  but  I  shouldn't  think  of  any- 
body on  that  as  a  neighbor." 

The  Altrurian  looked  so  blank  and  baffled  that  I 
could  hardly  help  laughing.  "  Then  I  should  not  know 
how  to  explain  Altruria  to  you,  I'm  afraid." 

"Well,"  she  returned,  lightly,  "if  it's  anything  like 
neighborliness  as  I've  seen  it  in  small  places,  deliver 
me  from  it!  I  like  being  independent  That's  why  I 
like  the  city.    You're  let  alone." 

"  I  was  down  in  New  York  once,  and  I  went  through 
some  of  the  streets  and  houses  where  the  poor  people 

127 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

live,"  said  young  Camp,  "  and  they  seemed  to  know 
each  other  and  to  be  quite  neighborly." 

"  And  would  you  like  to  be  all  messed  in  with  one  an- 
other that  way  ?"  demanded  the  lady. 

"Well,  I  thought  it  was  better  than  living  as  we  do 
in  the  country,  so  far  apart  that  we  never  see  one  an- 
other, hardly.  And  it  seems  to  me  better  than  not 
having  any  neighbors  at  all." 

"  Well,  every  one  to  his  taste,"  said  Mrs.  Makely. 
"  I  wish  you  would  tell  us  how  people  manage  with 
you  socially,  Mr.  Homos." 

"  Why,  you  know,"  he  began,  "  we  have  neither  city 
nor  country  in  your  sense,  and  so  we  are  neither  so 
isolated  nor  so  crowded  together.  You  feel  that  you 
lose  a  great  deal  in  not  seeing  one  another  of tener  ?"  he 
asked  Camp. 

"  Yes.  Folks  rust  out  living  alone.  It's  human  nat- 
ure to  want  to  get  together." 

"  And  I  understand  Mrs.  Makely  that  it  is  human 
nature  to  want  to  keep  apart  ?" 

"  Oh  no,  but  to  come  together  independently,"  she 
answered. 

"  Well,  that  is  what  we  have  contrived  in  our  life  at 
home.    I  should  have  to  say,  in  the  first  place,  that — " 

"  Excuse  me  just  one  moment,  Mr.  Homos,"  said 
Mrs.  Makely.  This  perverse  woman  was  as  anxious  to 
hear  about  Altruria  as  any  of  us,  but  she  was  a  woman 
who  would  rather  hear  the  sound  of  her  own  voice  than 
any  other,  even  if  she  were  dying,  as  she  would  call  it, 
to  hear  the  other.  The  Altrurian  stopped  politely,  and 
Mrs.  Makely  went  on :  "I  have  been  thinking  of  what 
Mr.  Camp  was  saying  about  the  blacklisted  men,  and 
their  all  turning  into  tramps — " 

"But  I  didn't  say  that,  Mrs.  Makely,"  the  young 

fellow  protested,  in  astonishment. 

128 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  Well,  it  stands  to  reason  that  if  the  tramps  have 
all  been  blacklisted  men — " 

"  But  I  didn't  say  that,  either." 

"  No  matter !  What  I  am  trying  to  get  at  is  this : 
if  a  workman  has  made  himself  a  nuisance  to  the  em- 
ployers, haven't  they  a  right  to  punish  him  in  any  way 
they  can  ?" 

"  I  believe  there's  no  law  yet  against  blacklisting," 
said  Camp. 

"  Very  well,  then,  I  don't  see  what  they've  got  to 
complain  of.  The  employers  surely  know  their  own 
business." 

"  They  claim  to  know  the  men's,  too.  That's  what 
they're  always  saying;  they  will  manage  their  own  af- 
fairs in  their  own  way.  But  no  man,  or  company,  that 
does  business  on  a  large  scale  has  any  affairs  that  are 
not  partly  other  folks'  affairs,  too.  All  the  saying  in 
the  world  won't  make  it  different." 

"  Very  well,  then,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  a  force 
of  argument  which  she  seemed  to  think  was  irresistible, 
"  I  think  the  workmen  had  better  leave  things  to  the 
employers,  and  then  they  won't  get  blacklisted.  It's 
as  broad  as  it's  long." 

I  confess  that,  although  I  agreed  with  Mrs.  Make- 
ly  in  regard  to  what  the  workmen  had  better  do, 
her  position  had  been  arrived  at  by  such  extraor- 
dinary reasoning  that  I  blushed  for  her ;  at  the  same 
time,  I  wanted  to  laugh.  She  continued,  triumphant- 
ly :  "  You  see,  the  employers  have  ever  so  much  more 
at  stake." 

"  Then  men  have  everything  at  stake — the  work  of 
their  hands,"  said  the  young  fellow. 

"Oh,  but  surely,"  said  M!rs.  Makely,  "you  wouldn't 
set  that  against  capital  ?  You  wouldn't  compare  the 
two  ?" 

129 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  Y'es,  I  should,"  said  Camp,  and  I  could  see  his  eye 
kindle  and  his  jaw  stiffen. 

"  Then  I  suppose  you  would  say  that  a  man  ought 
to  get  as  much  for  his  work  as  an  employer  gets  for 
his  capital.  If  you  think  one  has  as  much  at  stake  as 
the  other,  you  must  think  they  ought  to  be  paid  alike." 

"  That  is  just  what  I  think,"  said  Camp,  and  Mrs. 
Makely  burst  into  a  peal  of  amiable  laughter. 

"  Now,  that  is  too  preposterous !" 

"  Why  is  it  preposterous  ?"  he  demanded,  with  a 
quivering  nostril. 

"  Why,  simply  because  it  is"  said  the  lady,  but  she 
did  not  say  why,  and  although  I  thought  so,  too,  I  was 
glad  she  did  not  attempt  to  do  it,  for  her  conclusions 
seemed  to  me  much  better  than  her  reasons. 

The  old  wooden  clock  in  the  kitchen  began  to  strike, 
and  she  rose  briskly  to  her  feet  and  went  and  laid  the 
books  she  had  been  holding  in  her  lap  on  the  table  be- 
side Mrs.  Camp's  bed.  "  We  must  really  be  going," 
she  said,  as  she  leaned  over  and  kissed  the  invalid.  "  It 
is  your  dinner-time,  and  we  shall  barely  get  back  for 
lunch  if  we  go  by  the  Loop  road ;  and  I  want  very  much 
to  have  Mr.  Homos  see  the  Witch's  Falls  on  the  way. 
I  have  got  two  or  three  of  the  books  here  that  Mr. 
Makely  brought  me  last  night — I  sha'n't  have  time  to 
read  them  at  once — and  I'm  smuggling  in  one  of  Mr. 
Twelvemough's,  that  he's  too  modest  to  present  for 
himself."  She  turned  a  gay  glance  upon  me,  and  Mrs. 
Camp  thanked  me,  and  a  number  of  civilities  followed 
from  all  sides.  In  the  process  of  their  exchange,  Mrs. 
Makely's  spirits  perceptibly  rose,  and  she  came  away  in 
high  good-humor  with  the  whole  Camp  family.  "  Well, 
now,  I  am  sure,"  she  said  to  the  Altrurian,  as  we  began 
the  long  ascent  of  the  Loop  road,  "  you  must  allow  that 
you  have  seen  some  very  original  characters.     But  how 

130 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

ivarped  people  get  living  alone  so  much!  That  is  the 
great  drawback  of  the  country.  Mrs.  Camp  thinks  the 
savings-bank  did  her  a  real  injury  in  taking  a  mort- 
gage on  her  place,  and  Reuben  seems  to  have  seen  just 
enough  of  the  outside  world  to  get  it  all  wrong.  But 
they  are  the  best-hearted  creatures  in  the  world,  and  I 
know  you  won't  misunderstand  them.  That  unsparing 
country  bluntness  —  don't  you  think  it's  perfectly  de- 
lightful ?  I  do  like  to  stir  poor  Reuben  up,  and  get  him 
talking.  He  is  a  good  boy,  if  he  is  so  wrong-headed, 
and  he's  the  most  devoted  son  and  brother  in  the  world. 
Very  few  young  fellows  would  waste  their  lives  on  an 
old  farm  like  that;  I  suppose,  when  his  mother  dies, 
he  will  marry  and  strike  out  for  himself  in  some  grow- 
ing place." 

"  He  did  not  seem  to  think  the  world  held  out  any 
very  bright  inducements  for  him  to  leave  home,"  the 
Altrurian  suggested. 

"  Oh,  let  him  get  one  of  these  lively,  pushing  Yankee 
girls  for  a  wife,  and  he  will  think  very  differently," 
said  Mrs.  Makely. 

The  Altrurian  disappeared  that  afternoon,  and  I  saw 
little  or  nothing  of  him  till  the  next  day  at  supper. 
Then  he  said  he  had  been  spending  the  time  with  young 
Camp,  who  had  shown  him  something  of  the  farm-work, 
and  introduced  him  to  several  of  the  neighbors ;  he  was 
very  much  interested  in  it  all,  because  at  home  he  was, 
at  present,  engaged  in  farm-work  himself,  and  he  was 
curious  to  contrast  the  American  and  Altrurian  meth- 
ods. We  began  to  talk  of  the  farming  interest  again, 
later  in  the  day,  when  the  members  of  our  little  group 
came  together,  and  T  told  them  what  the  Altrurian  had 
been  doing.  The  doctor  had  been  suddenly  called  back 
to  town ;  but  the  minister  was  there,  and  the  lawyer  and 

the  professor  and   the  banker   and  the  manufacturer. 

131 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

Tt  was  the  banker  who  began  to  comment  on  what  I 
said,  and  he  seemed  to  be  in  the  frank  hnmor  of  the 
Saturday  night  before.  "  Yes,"  he  said,  "  it's  a  hard 
life,  and  they  have  to  look  sharp  if  they  expect  to  make 
both  ends  meet.  I  would  not  like  to  undertake  it  my- 
self with  their  resources." 

The  professor  smiled,  in  asking  the  Altrurian:  "  Did 
your  agricultural  friends  tell  you  anything  of  the  lit- 
tle rural  traffic  in  votes  that  they  carry  on  about  election 
time  ?  That  is  one  of  the  side  means  they  have  of 
making  both  ends  meet." 

"I  don't  understand,"  said  the  Altrurian. 

"  Why,  you  know,  you  can  buy  votes  among  our 
virtuous  yeomen  from  two  dollars  up  at  the  ordinary 
elections.  When  party  feeling  runs  high,  and  there 
are  vital  questions  at  stake,  the  votes  cost  more." 

The  Altrurian  looked  round  at  us  all  aghast.  "  Do 
you  mean  that  Americans  buy  votes?" 

The  professor  smiled  again.  "  Oh  no ;  I  only  mean 
that  they  sell  them.  Well,  I  don't  wonder  that  they 
rather  prefer  to  blink  the  fact ;  but  it  is  a  fact,  never- 
theless, and  pretty  notorious." 

"  Good  heavens !"  cried  the  Altrurian.  "  And  what 
defence  have  they  for  such  treason  ?  I  don't  mean  those 
who  sell;  from  what  I  have  seen  of  the  bareness  and 
hardship  of  their  lives,  I  could  well  imagine  that  there 
might  sometimes  come  a  pinch  when  they  would  be 
glad  of  the  few  dollars  that  they  could  get  in  that  way; 
but  what  have  those  who  buy  to  say?" 

"  Well,"  said  the  professor,  "  it  isn't  a  transaction 
that's  apt  to  be  talked  about  much  on  either  side." 

"  I  think,"  the  banker  interposed,  "  that  there  is 
some  exaggeration  about  that  business;  but  it  certain- 
ly exists,  and  I  suppose  it  is  a  growing  evil  in  the 

country.     I  fancy  it  arises,  somewhat,  from  a  want  of 

132 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRUEIA 

clear  thinking  on  the  subject.  Then  there  is  no  doubt 
but  it  comes,  sometimes,  from  poverty.  A  man  sells 
his  vote,  as  a  woman  sells  her  person,  for  money,  when 
neither  can  turn  virtue  into  cash.  They  feel  that  they 
must  live,  and  neither  of  them  would  be  satisfied  if 
Dr.  Johnson  told  them  he  didn't  see  the  necessity.  In 
fact,  I  shouldn't  myself,  if  I  were  in  their  places.  You 
can't  have  the  good  of  a  civilization  like  ours  without 
having  the  bad ;  but  I  am  not  going  to  deny  that  the 
bad  is  bad.  Some  people  like  to  do  that;  but  I  don't 
find  my  account  in  it.  In  either  case,  I  confess  that  I 
think  the  buyer  is  worse  than  the  seller — incompara- 
bly worse.  I  suppose  you  are  not  troubled  with  either 
case  in  Altruria  ?" 

"  Oh  no !"  said  the  Altrurian,  with  an  utter  horror, 
which  no  repetition  of  his  words  can  give  the  sense  of. 
"  It  would  be  unimaginable." 

"  Still,"  the  banker  suggested,  "  you  have  cakes  and 
ale,  and  at  times  the  ginger  is  hot  in  the  mouth  ?" 

"  I  don't  pretend  that  we  have  immunity  from  error; 
but  upon  such  terms  as  you  have  described  we  have 
none.     It  would  be  impossible." 

The  Altrurian's  voice  expressed  no  contempt,  but  only 
a  sad  patience,  a  melancholy  surprise,  such  as  a  celestial 
angel  might  feel  in  being  suddenly  confronted  with 
some  secret  shame  and  horror  of  the  Pit. 

"  Well,"  said  the  banker,  "  with  us  the  only  way  is 
to  take  the  business  view  and  try  to  strike  an  average 
somewhere." 

"  Talking  of  business,"  said  the  professor,  turning 
to  the  manufacturer,  who  had  been  quietly  smoking, 
"  why  don't  some  of  you  capitalists  take  hold  of  farm- 
ing here  in  the  East,  and  make  a  business  of  it  as  they 
do  in  the  West  ?" 

"Thank  you,"  said  the  other;  "if  you  mean  me,  I 

133 


A  TRAVELER  FKOM  ALTRURIA 

would  rather  not  invest."  He  was  silent  a  moment, 
and  then  he  went  on,  as  if  the  notion  were  beginning  to 
win  upon  him :  "  It  may  come  to  something  like  that, 
though.  If  it  does,  the  natural  course,  I  should  think, 
would  be  through  the  railroads.  It  would  be  a  very 
easy  matter  for  them  to  buy  up  all  the  good  farms  along 
their  lines  and  put  tenants  on  them,  and  run  them  in 
their  own  interest.  Really,  it  isn't  a  bad  scheme.  The 
waste  in  the  present  method  is  enormous,  and  there  is 
no  reason  why  the  roads  should  not  own  the  farms,  as 
they  are  beginning  to  own  the  mines.  They  could 
manage  them  better  than  the  small  farmers  do  in  every 
way.  I  wonder  the  thing  hasn't  occurred  to  some  smart 
railroad  man." 

We  all  laughed  a  little,  perceiving  the  semi-ironical 
spirit  of  his  talk;  but  the  Altrurian  must  have  taken 
it  in  dead  earnest :  "  But,  in  that  case,  the  number  of 
people  thrown  out  of  work  would  be  very  great,  wouldn't 
it  ?    And  what  would  become  of  them  ?" 

"  Well,  they  would  have  whatever  their  farms  brought 
to  make  a  new  start  with  somewhere  else ;  and,  besides, 
that  question  of  what  would  become  of  people  thrown 
out  of  work  by  a  given  improvement  is  something  that 
capital  cannot  consider.  We  used  to  introduce  a  bit  of 
machinery  in  the  mill,  every  now  and  then,  that  threw 
out  a  dozen  or  a  hundred  people ;  but  we  couldn't  stop 
for  that." 

"  And  you  never  knew  what  became  of  them  ?" 

"  Sometimes.  Generally  not.  We  took  it  for  grant- 
ed that  they  would  light  on  their  feet  somehow." 

"  And  the  state — the  whole  people — the  government 
— did  nothing  for  them  ?" 

"  If  it  became  a  question  of  the  poor-house,  yes." 

"  Or  the  jail,"  the  lawyer  suggested. 

"  Speaking  of  the  poor-house,"  said  the  professor, 

134 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  did  our  exemplary  rural  friends  tell  you  how  they 
sell  out  their  paupers  to  the  lowest  bidder,  and  get 
them  boarded  sometimes  as  low  as  a  dollar  and  a  quar- 
ter a  week  ?" 

"  Yes,  young  Mr.  Camp  told  me  of  that.  He  seemed 
to  think  it  was  terrible." 

"  Did  he  ?  Well,  I'm  glad  to  hear  that  of  young  Mr. 
Camp.  From  all  that  I've  been  told  before,  he  seems 
to  reserve  his  conscience  for  the  use  of  capitalists. 
What  does  he  propose  to  do  about  it  ?" 

"  He  seems  to  think  the  state  ought  to  find  work  for 
them." 

"  Oh,  paternalism !    Well,  I  guess  the  state  won't." 

"  That  was  his  opinion,  too." 

"  It  seems  a  hard  fate,"  said  the  minister,  "  that  the 
only  provision  the  law  makes  for  people  who  are  worn 
out  by  sickness  or  a  life  of  work  should  be  something 
that  assorts  them  with  idiots  and  lunatics,  and  brings 
such  shame  upon  them  that  it  is  almost  as  terrible  as 
death." 

"  It  is  the  only  way  to  encourage  independence  and 
individuality,"  said  the  professor.  "  Of  course,  it  has 
its  dark  side.  But  anything  else  would  be  sentimental 
and  unbusinesslike,  and,  in  fact,  un-American." 

"  I  am  not  so  sure  that  it  would  be  un-Christian," 
the  minister  timidly  ventured,  in  the  face  of  such  an 
authority  on  political  economy. 

"  Oh,  as  to  that,  I  must  leave  the  question  to  the 
reverend  clergy,"  said  the  professor. 

A  very  unpleasant  little  silence  followed.     It  was 

broken  by  the  lawyer,  who  put  his  feet  together,  and, 

after  a  glance  down  at  them,  began  to  say :  "  I  was  very 

much  interested  this  afternoon  by  a  conversation  I  had 

witli  some  of  the  young  fellows  in  the  hotel.    You  know 

most  of  them  are  graduates,  and  they  are  taking  a  sort 

135 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

of  supernumerary  vacation  this  summer  before  they 
plunge  into  the  battle  of  life  in  the  autumn.  They  were 
talking  of  some  other  fellows,  classmates  of  theirs,  who 
were  not  so  lucky,  but  had  been  obliged  to  begin  the 
fight  at  once.  It  seems  that  our  fellows  here  are  all 
going  in  for  some  sort  of  profession:  medicine  or  law 
or  engineering  or  teaching  or  the  church,  and  they 
were  commiserating  those  other  fellows  not  only  because 
they  were  not  having  the  supernumerary  vacation,  but 
because  they  were  going  into  business.  That  struck  me 
as  rather  odd,  and  I  tried  to  find  out  what  it  meant,  and, 
as  nearly  as  I  could  find  out,  it  meant  that  most  college 
graduates  would  not  go  into  business  if  they  could  help 
it.  They  seemed  to  feel  a  sort  of  incongruity  between 
their  education  and  the  business  life.  They  pitied  the 
fellows  that  had  to  go  in  for  it,  and  apparently  the  fel- 
lows that  had  to  go  in  for  it  pitied  themselves,  for  the 
talk  seemed  to  have  begun  about  a  letter  that  one  of  the 
chaps  here  had  got  from  poor  Jack  or  Jim  somebody, 
who  had  been  obliged  to  go  into  his  father's  business, 
and  was  groaning  over  it.  The  fellows  who  were  going 
to  study  professions  were  hugging  themselves  at  the  con- 
trast between  their  fate  and  his,  and  were  making  re- 
marks about  business  that  were,  to  say  the  least,  unbusi- 
nesslike. A  few  years  ago  we  should  have  made  a 
summary  disposition  of  the  matter,  and  I  believe  some 
of  the  newspapers  still  are  in  doubt  about  the  value  of 
a  college  education  to  men  who  have  got  to  make  their 
way.     What  do  you  think  ?" 

The  lawyer  addressed  his  question  to  the  manufact- 
urer, who  answered,  with  a  comfortable  satisfaction, 
that  he  did  not  think  those  young  men  if  they  went 
into  business  would  find  that  they  knew  too  much. 

"  But  they  pointed  out,"  said  the  lawyer,  "  that  the 

great  American  fortunes  had  been  made  by  men  who 

136 


A  TRAVELEE  FROM  ALTRURIA 

had  never  had  their  educational  advantages,  and  they 
seemed  to  think  that  what  we  call  the  education  of  a 
gentleman  was  a  little  too  good  for  money-making  pur- 
poses." 

"  Well,"  said  the  other,  "  they  can  console  them- 
selves with  the  reflection  that  going  into  business  isn't 
necessarily  making  money;  it  isn't  necessarily  making 
a  living,  even." 

"  Some  of  them  seem  to  have  caught  on  to  that  fact ; 
and  they  pitied  Jack  or  Jim  partly  because  the  chances 
were  so  much  against  him.  But  they  pitied  him  mostly 
because  in  the  life  before  him  he  would  have  no  use  for 
his  academic  training,  and  he  had  better  not  gone  to 
college  at  all.  They  said  he  would  be  none  the  better 
for  it,  and  would  always  be  miserable  when  he  looked 
back  to  it." 

The  manufacturer  did  not  reply,  and  the  professor, 
after  a  preliminary  hemming,  held  his  peace.  It  was 
the  banker  who  took  the  word :  "  Well,  so  far  as  busi- 
ness is  concerned,  they  were  right.  It  is  no  use  to  pre- 
tend that  there  is  any  relation  between  business  and  the 
higher  education.  There  is  no  business  man  who  will 
pretend  that  there  is  not  often  an  actual  incompatibility 
if  he  is  honest.  I  know  that  when  we  get  together  at  a 
commercial  or  financial  dinner  we  talk  as  if  great  mer- 
chants and  great  financiers  were  beneficent  geniuses, 
who  evoked  the  prosperity  of  mankind  by  their  schemes 
from  the  conditions  that  would  otherwise  have  remained 
barren.  Well,  very  likely  they  are,  but  we  must  all 
confess  that  they  do  not  know  it  at  the  time.  What 
they  are  consciously  looking  out  for  then  is  the  main 
chance.  If  general  prosperity  follows,  all  well  and 
good;  they  are  willing  to  be  given  the  credit  for  it. 
But,  as  I  said,  with  business  as  business,  the  '  education 

of  a  gentleman '  has  nothing  to  do.     That  education  is 

137 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

alwavs  putting  the  old  Ciceronian  question  :  whether  the 
fellow  arriving  at  a  starving  city  with  a  cargo  of  grain 
is  bound  to  tell  the  people  before  he  squeezes  them  that 
there  arc  half  a  dozen  other  fellows  with  grain  just  be- 
low the  horizon.  As  a  gentleman  he  would  have  to  tell 
them,  because  he  could  not  take  advantage  of  their  ne- 
cessities; but,  as  a  business  man,  he  would  think  it  bad 
business  to  tell  them,  or  no  business  at  all.  The  prin- 
ciple goes  all  through ;  I  say,  business  is  business ;  and 
I  am  not  going  to  pretend  that  business  will  ever  be  any- 
thing else.  In  our  business  battles  we  don't  take  off 
our  hats  to  the  other  side  and  say,  i  Gentlemen  of  the 
French  Guard,  have  the  goodness  to  fire.'  That  may 
be  war,  but  it  is  not  business.  We  seize  all  the  advan- 
tages we  can ;  very  few  of  us  would  actually  deceive ; 
but  if  a  fellow  believes  a  thing,  and  we  know  he  is 
wrong,  we  do  not  usually  take  the  trouble  to  set  him 
right,  if  we  are  going  to  lose  anything  by  undeceiving 
him.  That  would  not  be  business.  I  suppose  you  think 
that  is  dreadful  ?"  He  turned  smilingly  to  the  min- 
ister. 

"  T  wish  —  I  wish,"  said  the  minister,  gently,  "  it 
could  be  otherwise." 

"  Well,  I  wish  so,  too,"  returned  the  banker.  "  But 
it  isn't.  Am  I  right  or  am  I  wrong  ?"  he  demanded  of 
the  manufacturer,  who  laughed. 

"  I  am  not  conducting  this  discussion.  I  will  not 
deprive  you  of  the  floor." 

"  What  you  say,"  I  ventured  to  put  in,  "  reminds  me 

of  the  experience  of  a  friend  of  mine,  a  brother  novelist. 

He  wrote  a  story  where  the  failure  of  a  business  man 

turned  on  a  point  just  like  that  you  have  instanced. 

The  man  could  have  retrieved  himself  if  he  had  let 

some  people  believe  that  what  was  so  was  not  so,  but  his 

conscience  stepped  in  and  obliged  him  to  own  the  truth. 

138 


A  TRAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

There  was  a  good  deal  of  talk  about  the  case,  I  suppose, 
because  it  was  not  in  real  life,  and  my  friend  heard 
divers  criticisms.  He  heard  of  a  group  of  ministers 
who  blamed  him  for  exalting  a  case  of  common  honesty, 
as  if  it  were  something  extraordinary;  and  he  heard 
of  some  business  men  who  talked  it  over  and  said  he 
had  worked  the  case  up  splendidly,  but  he  was  all 
wrong  in  the  outcome — the  fellow  would  never  have 
told  the  other  fellows.  They  said  it  would  not  have 
been  business." 

Wo  all  laughed  except  the  minister  and  the  x\ltru- 
rian;  the  manufacturer  said:  "  Twenty-five  years  hence, 
the  fellow  who  is  going  into  business  may  pity  the  fel- 
lows who  are  pitying  him  for  his  hard  fate  now." 

"  Very  possibly,  but  not  necessarily,"  said  the  banker. 
"  Of  course,  the  business  man  is  on  top,  as  far  as  money 
goes ;  he  is  the  fellow  who  makes  the  big  fortunes ;  the 
millionaire  lawyers  and  doctors  and  ministers  are  ex- 
ceptional. But  his  risks  are  tremendous.  Ninety-five 
times  out  of  a  hundred  he  fails.  To  be  sure,  he  picks 
up  and  goes  on,  but  he  seldom  gets  there,  after  all." 

"  Then  in  your  system,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  the 
great  majority  of  those  who  go  into  what  you  call  the 
battle  of  life  are  defeated  ?" 

"  The  killed,  wounded,  and  missing  sum  up  a  fright- 
ful total,"  the  banker  admitted.  "  But  whatever  the 
end  is,  there  is  a  great  deal  of  prosperity  on  the  way. 
The  statistics  are  correct,  but  they  do  not  tell  the  whole 
truth.  It  is  not  so  bad  as  it  seems.  Still,  simply  look- 
ing at  the  material  chances,  I  don't  blame  those  young 
fellows  for  not  wanting  to  go  into  business.  And  when 
you  come  to  other  considerations !  We  used  to  cut  the 
knot  of  the  difficulty  pretty  sharply;  we  said  a  college 
education  was  wrong,  or  the  hot  and  hot  American 
spread-eaglers  did.    Business  is  the  national  ideal,  and 

139 


A  TRAVELER  FKOI  ALTRURIA 

the  successful  business  man  is  the  American  type.     It 
is  a  business  man's  country." 

"  Then,  if  I  understand  you,"  said  the  Altrurian, 
"  and  I  am  very  anxious  to  have  a  clear  understanding 
of  the  matter,  the  effect  of  the  university  with  you  is 
to  unfit  a  youth  for  business  life." 

"  Oh  no.  It  may  give  him  great  advantages  in  it, 
and  that  is  the  theory  and  expectation  of  most  fathers 
who  send  their  sons  to  the  university.  But,  undoubt- 
edly, the  effect  is  to  render  business  life  distasteful. 
The  university  nurtures  all  sorts  of  lofty  ideals,  which 
business  has  no  use  for." 

"  Then  the  effect  is  undemocratic  ?" 

"  No,  it  is  simply  unbusinesslike.  The  boy  is  a  bet- 
ter democrat  when  he  leaves  college  than  he  will  be 
later,  if  he  goes  into  business.  The  university  has 
taught  him  and  equipped  him  to  use  his  own  gifts  and 
powers  for  his  advancement;  but  the  first  lesson  of 
business,  and  the  last,  is  to  use  other  men's  gifts  and 
powers.  If  he  looks  about  him  at  all,  he  sees  that 
no  man  gets  rich  simply  by  his  own  labor,  no  matter 
how  mighty  a  genius  he  is,  and  that,  if  you  want  to 
get  rich,  you  must  make  other  men  work  for  you,  and 
pay  vou  for  the  privilege  of  doing  so.  Isn't  that 
true  ?" 

The  banker  turned  to  the  manufacturer  with  this 
question,  and  the  other  said :  "  The  theory  is,  that  we 
give  people  work,"  and  they  both  laughed. 

The  minister  said :  "  I  believe  that  in  Altruria  no 
man  works  for  the  profit  of  another  ?" 

"  No ;  each  works  for  the  profit  of  all,"  replied  the 
Altrurian. 

"  Well,"  said  the  banker,  "  you  seem  to  have  made 
it  go.  Nobody  can  deny  that.  But  we  couldn't  make 
it  go  here." 

140 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  Why  ?  I  am  very  curious  to  know  why  our  system 
seems  so  impossible  to  you." 

"  Well,  it  is  contrary  to  the  American  spirit.  It  is 
alien  to  our  love  of  individuality." 

"  But  we  prize  individuality,  too,  and  we  think  we 
secure  it  under  our  system.  Under  yours,  it  seems  to 
me  that  while  the  individuality  of  the  man  who  makes 
other  men  work  for  him  is  safe,  except  from  itself,  the 
individuality  of  the  workers — " 

"  Well,  that  is  their  lookout.  We  have  found  that, 
upon  the  whole,  it  is  best  to  let  every  man  look  out  for 
himself.  I  know  that,  in  a  certain  light,  the  result  has 
an  ugly  aspect;  but,  nevertheless,  in  spite  of  all,  the 
country  is  enormously  prosperous.  The  pursuit  of  hap- 
piness, which  is  one  of  the  inalienable  rights  secured  to 
us  by  the  Declaration,  is,  and  always  has  been,  a  dream ; 
but  the  pursuit  of  the  dollar  yields  tangible  proceeds, 
and  we  get  a  good  deal  of  excitement  out  of  it  as  it  goes 
on.  You  can't  deny  that  we  are  the  richest  nation  in 
the  world.     Do  you  call  Altruria  a  rich  country  ?" 

I  could  not  quite  make  out  whether  the  banker  was 
serious  or  not  in  all  this  talk;  sometimes  I  suspected 
him  of  a  fine  mockery,  but  the  Altrurian  took  him  upon 
the  surface  of  his  words. 

"  I  hardly  know  whether  it  is  or  not.  The  question 
of  wealth  does  not  enter  into  our  scheme.  I  can  say 
that  we  all  have  enough,  and  that  no  one  is  even  in  the 
fear  of  want." 

"  Yes,  that  is  very  well.  But  we  should  think  it  was 
paying  too  much  for  it  if  we  had  to  give  up  the  hope  of 
ever  having  more  than  we  wanted,"  and  at  this  point 
the  banker  uttered  his  jolly  laugh,  and  I  perceived  that 
he  had  been  trying  to  draw  the  Altrurian  out  and  prac- 
tise upon  his  patriotism.  It  was  a  great  relief  to  find 
that  he  had  been  joking  in  so  much  that  seemed  a  dead 

io  141 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

give-away  of  our  economical  position.  "  In  Altruria," 
he  asked,  "  who  is  your  ideal  great  man  ?  I  don't  mean 
personally,  hut  abstractly." 

The  Altrurian  thought  a  moment.  "  With  us  there 
is  so  little  ambition  for  distinction,  as  you  understand 
it,  that  your  question  is  hard  to  answer.  But  I  should 
say,  speaking  largely,  that  it  was  some  man  who  had 
been  able  for  the  time  being  to  give  the  greatest  hap- 
piness to  the  greatest  number — some  artist  or  poet  or 
inventor  or  physician." 

I  was  somewhat  surprised  to  have  the  banker  take 
this  preposterous  statement  seriously,  respectfully. 
"  Well,  that  is  quite  conceivable  with  your  system. 
What  should  you  say,"  he  demanded  of  the  rest  of 
us  generally,  "  was  our  ideal  of  greatness  ?" 

No  one  replied  at  once,  or  at  all,  till  the  manufact- 
urer said :  "  We  will  let  you  continue  to  run  it." 

"  Well,  it  is  a  very  curious  inquiry,  and  I  have 
thought  it  over  a  good  deal.  I  should  say  that  within 
a  generation  our  ideal  has  changed  twice.  Before  the 
war,  and  during  all  the  time  from  the  Revolution  on- 
ward, it  was  undoubtedly  the  great  politician,  the  pub- 
licist, the  statesman.  As  Ave  grew  older  and  began  to 
have  an  intellectual  life  of  our  own,  I  think  the  literary 
fellows  had  a  pretty  good  share  of  the  honors  that  were 
going — that  is,  such  a  man  as  Longfellow  was  popu- 
larly considered  a  type  of  greatness.  When  the  war 
came,  it  brought  the  soldier  to  the  front,  and  there  was 
a  period  of  ten  or  fifteen  years  when  he  dominated  the 
national  imagination.  That  period  passed,  and  the 
great  era  of  material  prosperity  set  in.  The  big  fort- 
unes began  to  tower  up,  and  heroes  of  another  sort 
began  to  appeal  to  our  admiration.  I  don't  think  there 
is  any  doubt  but  the  millionaire  is  now  the  American 
ideal.    It  isn't  verv  pleasant  to  think  so,  even  for  people 

142 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

who  have  got  on,  but  it  can't  very  hopefully  be  denied. 
It  is  the  man  with  the  most  money  who  now  takes  the 
prize  in  our  national  cake-walk." 

The  Altrurian  turned  curiously  toward  me,  and  I 
did  my  best  to  tell  him  what  a  cake-walk  was.  When 
I  had  finished,  the  banker  resumed,  only  to  say,  as  he 
rose  from  his  chair  to  bid  us  good-night:  "  In  any  aver- 
age assembly  of  Americans  the  greatest  millionaire 
would  take  the  eyes  of  all  from  the  greatest  states- 
man, the  greatest  poet,  or  the  greatest  soldier  we  ever 
had.  That,"  he  added  to  the  Altrurian,  "  will  account 
to  you  for  many  things  as  you  travel  through  our  coun- 
try." 


IX 


The  next  time  the  members  of  our  little  group  came 
together,  the  manufacturer  began  at  once  upon  the 
banker : 

"  I  should  think  that  our  friend  the  professor,  here, 
would  hardly  like  that  notion  of  yours,  that  business,  as 
business,  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  education  of  a 
gentleman.  If  this  is  a  business  man's  country,  and  if 
the  professor  has  nothing  in  stock  but  the  sort  of  educa- 
tion that  business  has  no  use  for,  I  should  suppose  that 
he  would  want  to  go  into  some  other  line." 

The  banker  mutely  referred  the  matter  to  the  pro- 
fessor, who  said,  with  that  cold  grin  of  his  which  I 
hated : 

"  Perhaps  we  shall  wait  for  business  to  purge  and 
live  cleanly.  Then  it  will  have  some  use  for  the  edu- 
cation of  a  gentleman." 

"  I  see,"  said  the  banker,  "  that  I  have  touched  the 
quick  in  both  of  you,  when  I  hadn't  the  least  notion  of 
doing  so.  But  I  shouldn't  really  like  to  prophesy  which 
will  adapt  itself  to  the  other — education  or  business. 
Let  us  hope  there  will  be  mutual  concessions.  There 
are  some  pessimists  who  say  that  business  methods,  es- 
pecially on  the  large  scale  of  the  trusts  and  combina- 
tions, have  grown  worse  instead  of  better ;  but  this  may 
be  merely  what  is  called  a  '  transition  state.'  Hamlet 
must  be  cruel  to  be  kind;  the  darkest  hour  comes  be- 
fore dawn — and  so  on.  Perhaps  when  business  gets 
the  whole  affair  of  life  into  its  hands,  and  runs  the  re- 

144 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

public,  as  its  enemies  now  accuse  it  of  doing,  the  process 
of  purging  and  living  cleanly  will  begin.  I  have  known 
lots  of  fellows  who  started  in  life  rather  scampishly; 
but  when  they  felt  secure  of  themselves,  and  believed 
that  they  could  afford  to  be  honest,  they  became  so. 
There's  no  reason  why  the  same  thing  shouldn't  happen 
on  a  large  scale.  We  must  never  forget  that  we  are 
still  a  very  novel  experiment,  though  we  have  matured 
so  rapidly  in  some  respects  that  we  have  come  to  re- 
gard ourselves  as  an  accomplished  fact.  We  are  really 
less  so  than  we  were  forty  years  ago,  with  all  the  tre- 
mendous changes  since  the  war.  Before  that  we  could 
take  certain  matters  for  granted.  If  a  man  got  out  of 
work,  he  turned  his  hand  to  something  else;  if  a  man 
failed  in  business,  he  started  in  again  from  some  other 
direction ;  as  a  last  resort,  in  both  cases,  he  went  West, 
pre-empted  a  quarter-section  of  public  land,  and  grew 
up  with  the  country.  Now  the  country  is  grown  up; 
the  public  land  is  gone ;  business  is  full  on  all  sides, 
and  the  hand  that  turned  itself  to  something  else  has 
lost  its  cunning.  The  struggle  for  life  has  changed 
from  a  free-fight  to  an  encounter  of  disciplined  forces, 
and  the  free-fighters  that  are  left  get  ground  to  pieces 
between  organized  labor  and  organized  capital.  De- 
cidedly, we  are  in  a  transition  state,  and  if  the  higher 
education  tried  to  adapt  itself  to  business  needs,  there 
are  chances  that  it  might  sacrifice  itself  without  helping 
business.  After  all,  how  much  education  does  business 
need  ?  Were  our  great  fortunes  made  by  educated  men, 
or  men  of  university  training  ?  I  don't  know  but  these 
young  fellows  are  right  about  that." 

"  Yes,  that  may  all  be,"  I  put  in.  "  But  it  seems  to 
me  that  you  give  Mr.  Homos,  somehow,  a  wrong  im- 
pression of  our  economic  life  by  your  generalizations. 
You  are  a  Harvard  man  yourself." 

145 


A  TRAVELER  EROil  ALTRURIA 

"  Yes,  and  I  am  not  a  rich  man.  A  million  or  two, 
more  or  less ;  but  what  is  that  ?  I  have  suffered,  at  the 
start  and  all  along,  from  the  question  as  to  what  a  man 
with  the  education  of  a  gentleman  ought  to  do  in  such 
and  such  a  juncture.  The  fellows  who  have  not  that 
sort  of  education  have  not  that  sort  of  question,  and 
they  go  in  and  win." 

"  So  you  admit,  then,"  said  the  professor,  "  that  the 
higher  education  elevates  a  business  man's  standard  of 
morals  ?" 

"  Undoubtedly.  That  is  one  of  its  chief  drawbacks," 
said  the  banker,  with  a  laugh. 

"  Well,"  I  said,  with  the  deference  due  even  to  a  man 
who  had  only  a  million  or  two,  more  or  less,  "  w7e  must 
allow  you  to  say  such  things.  But  if  the  case  is  so  bad 
with  the  business  men  who  have  made  the  great  fortunes 
— the  business  men  who  have  never  had  the  disadvan- 
tage of  a  university  education — I  wish  you  would  ex- 
plain to  Mr.  Homos  why,  in  every  public  exigency,  we 
instinctively  appeal  to  the  business  sense  of  the  com- 
munity as  if  it  were  the  fountain  of  wisdom,  probity, 
and  equity.  Suppose  there  were  some  question  of  vital 
interest — I  won't  say  financial,  but  political  or  moral 
or  social — on  which  it  was  necessary  to  rouse  public 
opinion,  what  would  be  the  first  thing  to  do  ?  To 
call  a  meeting  over  the  signatures  of  the  leading  busi- 
ness men,  because  no  other  names  appeal  with  such 
force  to  the  public.  You  might  get  up  a  call  signed 
by  all  the  novelists,  artists,  ministers,  lawyers,  and 
doctors  in  the  state,  and  it  would  not  have  a  tithe  of  the 
effect,  with  the  people  at  large,  that  a  call  signed  by  a 
few  leading  merchants,  bank  presidents,  railroad  men, 
and  trust  officers  would  have.  What  is  the  reason  ?  It 
seems  strange  that  I  should  be  asking  you  to  defend 
yourself  against  yourself." 

146 


A  TKAVELEK  FEOM  ALTKURIA 

"  Not  at  all,  my  dear  fellow,  not  at  all,"  the  banker 
replied,  with  his  caressing  bonhomie.  "  Though  I  will 
confess,  to  begin  with,  that  I  do  not  expect  to  answer 
your  question  to  your  entire  satisfaction.  I  can  only 
do  my  best — on  the  instalment  plan." 

He  turned  to  the  Altrurian,  and  then  went  on: 
"  As  I  said  the  other  night,  this  is  a  business  man's 
country.  We  are  a  purely  commercial  people;  money 
is  absolutely  to  the  fore ;  and  business,  which  is  the 
means  of  getting  the  most  money,  is  the  American  ideal. 
If  you  like,  you  may  call  it  the  American  fetish;  I 
don't  mind  calling  it  so  myself.  The  fact  that  busi- 
ness is  our  ideal,  or  our  fetish,  will  account  for  the 
popular  faith  in  business  men,  who  form  its  priesthood, 
its  hierarchy.  I  don't  know,  myself,  any  other  reason 
for  regarding  business  men  as  solider  than  novelists  or 
artists  or  ministers,  not  to  mention  lawyers  and  doctors. 
They  are  supposed  to  have  long  heads;  but  it  appears 
that  ninety-five  times  out  of  a  hundred  they  haven't. 
They  are  supposed  to  be  very  reliable ;  but  it  is  almost 
invariably  a  business  man  of  some  sort  who  gets  out  to 
Canada  while  the  state  examiner  is  balancing  his  books, 
and  it  is  usually  the  longest  headed  business  men  who 
get  plundered  by  him.  ~No,  it  is  simply  because  busi- 
ness is  our  national  ideal  that  the  business  man  is 
honored  above  all  other  men  among  us.  In  the  aristo- 
cratic countries  they  forward  a  public  object  under  the 
patronage  of  the  nobility  and  gentry;  in  a  plutocratic 
country  they  get  the  business  men  to  indorse  it.  I  sup- 
pose that  the  average  American  citizen  feels  that  they 
wouldn't  indorse  a  thing  unless  it  was  safe;  and  the 
average  American  citizen  likes  to  be  safe — he  is  cau- 
tious. As  a  matter  of  fact,  business  men  are  always 
taking  risks,  and  business  is  a  game  of  chance,  in  a  cer- 
tain degree.    Have  I  made  myself  intelligible  ?" 

147 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

'"  Entirely  so,"  said  the  Altrurian ;  and  he  seemed 
so  thoroughly  well  satisfied  that  he  forbore  asking  any 
further  question. 

No  one  else  spoke.  The  banker  lighted  a  cigar,  and 
resumed  at  the  point  where  he  left  off  when  I  ventured 
to  enter  upon  the  defence  of  his  class  with  him.  I  must 
say  that  he  had  not  convinced  me  at  all.  At  that  mo- 
ment I  would  rather  have  trusted  him,  in  any  serious 
matter  of  practical  concern,  than  all  the  novelists  I  ever 
heard  of.  But  I  thought  I  would  leave  the  word  to 
him,  without  further  attempt  to  reinstate  him  in  his 
self-esteem.  In  fact,  he  seemed  to  be  getting  along  very 
well  without  it,  or  else  he  was  feeling  that  mysterious 
control  from  the  Altrurian  which  I  had  already  sus- 
pected him  of  using.  Voluntarily  or  involuntarily,  the 
banker  proceeded  with  his  contribution  to  the  Altru- 
rian's  stock  of  knowledge  concerning  our  civiliza- 
tion : 

"  I  don't  believe,  however,  that  the  higher  education 
is  any  more  of  a  failure,  as  a  provision  for  a  business 
career,  than  the  lower  education  is  for  the  life  of  labor. 
I  suppose  that  the  hypercritical  observer  might  say  that 
in  a  wholly  commercial  civilization  like  ours  the  busi- 
ness man  really  needed  nothing  beyond  the  three  R's, 
and  the  working-man  needed  no  E  at  all.  As  a  practical 
affair,  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  said  in  favor  of  that 
view.  The  higher  education  is  part  of  the  social  ideal 
which  we  have  derived  from  the  past,  from  Europe. 
It  is  part  of  the  provision  for  the  life  of  leisure,  the 
life  of  the  aristocrat,  which  nobody  of  our  generation 
leads,  except  women.  Our  women  really  have  some  use 
for  the  education  of  a  gentleman,  but  our  men  have 
none.  How  will  that  do  for  a  generalization  ?"  the 
banker  asked  of  me. 

"  Oh,"  I  admitted,  with  a  laugh,  "  it  is  a  good  deal 

148 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

like  one  of  my  own.  I  have  always  been  struck  with 
that  phase  of  our  civilization." 

"  Well,  then,"  the  banker  resumed,  "  take  the  lower 
education.  That  is  part  of  the  civic  ideal  which,  I  sup- 
pose, I  may  say  we  evolved  from  the  depths  of  our  inner 
consciousness  of  what  an  American  citizen  ought  to  be. 
It  includes  instruction  in  all  the  R's,  and  in  several 
other  letters  of  the  alphabet.  It  is  given  free  by  the 
state,  and  no  one  can  deny  that  it  is  thoroughly  so- 
cialistic in  conception  and  application." 

"  Distinctly  so,"  said  the  professor.  "  Now  that  the 
text-books  are  furnished  by  the  state,  we  have  only  to 
go  a  step  further  and  provide  a  good,  hot  lunch  for  the 
children  every  day,  as  they  do  in  Paris." 

"  Well,"  the  banker  returned,  "  I  don't  know  that  I 
should  have  much  to  say  against  that.  It  seems  as  rea- 
sonable as  anything  in  the  system  of  education  which 
we  force  upon  the  working  classes.  They  know  per- 
fectly well,  whether  we  do  or  not,  that  the  three  R's 
will  not  make  their  children  better  mechanics  or  labor- 
ers, and  that,  if  the  fight  for  a  mere  living  is  to  go  on 
from  generation  to  generation,  they  will  have  no  leisure 
to  apply  the  little  learning  they  get  in  the  public  schools 
for  their  personal  culture.  In  the  mean  time  we  de- 
prive the  parents  of  their  children's  labor,  in  order  that 
they  may  be  better  citizens  for  their  schooling,  as  we 
imagine;  I  don't  know  whether  they  are  or  not.  We 
offer  them  no  sort  of  compensation  for  their  time,  and 
I  think  we  ought  to  feel  obliged  to  them  for  not  wanting 
wages  for  their  children  while  we  are  teaching  them  to 
be  better  citizens." 

"  You  know,"  said  the  professor,  "  that  has  been  sug- 
gested by  some  of  their  leaders." 

"  No,  really  ?  Well,  that  is  too  good !"  The  banker 
threw  back  his  head  and  roared,  and  we  all  laughed 

149 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

with  liim.  When  we  had  sohered  down  again,  he  said : 
"  I  suppose  that  when  a  working-man  makes  all  the  use 
he  can  of  his  lower  education  he  becomes  a  business 
man,  and  then  he  doesn't  need  the  higher.  Professor, 
you  seem  to  be  left  out  in  the  cold  by  our  system,  which- 
ever way  you  take  it." 

"  Oh,"  said  the  professor,  "  the  law  of  supply  and 
demand  works  both  ways :  it  creates  the  demand,  if  the 
supply  comes  first ;  and  if  we  keep  on  giving  the  sons 
of  business  men  the  education  of  a  gentleman,  we  may 
yet  make  them  feel  the  need  of  it.  We  shall  evolve  a 
new  sort  of  business  man." 

"  The  sort  that  can't  make  money,  or  wouldn't  ex- 
actly like  to,  on  some  terms  ?"  asked  the  banker.  "  Well, 
perhaps  we  shall  work  out  our  democratic  salvation  in 
that  way.  When  you  have  educated  your  new  business 
man  to  the  point  where  he  can't  consent  to  get  rich  at 
the  obvious  cost  of  others,  you've  got  him  on  the  way 
back  to  work  with  his  hands.  He  will  sink  into  the 
ranks  of  labor,  and  give  the  fellow  with  the  lower  educa- 
tion a  chance.  I've  no  doubt  he'll  take  it.  I  don't  know 
but  you're  right,  professor." 

The  lawyer  had  not  spoken  as  yet.  Kow  he  said: 
"  Then  it  is  education,  after  all,  that  is  to  bridge  the 
chasm  between  the  classes  and  the  masses,  though  it 
seems  destined  to  go  a  long  way  around  about  it.  There 
was  a  time,  I  believe,  when  we  expected  religion  to  do 
that." 

"  Well,  it  may  still  be  doing  it,  for  all  I  know,"  said 
the  banker.  "  What  do  you  say  ?"  he  asked,  turning  to 
the  minister.  "  You  ought  to  be  able  to  give  us  some 
statistics  on  the  subject  with  that  large  congregation  of 
yours.  You  preach  to  more  people  than  any  other  pul- 
pit in  your  city." 

The  banker  named  one  of  the  principal  cities  in  the 

150 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

East,  and  the  minister  answered,  with  modest  pride: 
"  I  am  not  sure  of  that ;  but  our  society  is  certainly  a 
very  large  one." 

"  Well,  and  how  many  of  the  lower  classes  are  there 
in  it — people  who  work  for  their  living  with  their 
hands  ?" 

The  minister  stirred  uneasily  in  his  chair,  and  at  last 
he  said,  with  evident  unhappiness :  "  They — I  suppose 
— they  have  their  own  churches.  I  have  never  thought 
that  such  a  separation  of  the  classes  was  right;  and  I 
have  had  some  of  the  very  best  people — socially  and 
financially — with  me  in  the  wish  that  there  might  be 
more  brotherliness  between  the  rich  and  poor  among  us. 
But  as  yet — " 

He  stopped ;  the  banker  pursued :  "  Do  you  mean 
there  are  no  working-people  in  your  congregation  2" 

"  I  cannot  think  of  any,"  returned  the  minister,  so 
miserably  that  the  banker  forbore  to  press  the  point. 

The  lawyer  broke  the  awkward  pause  which  followed : 
"  I  have  heard  it  asserted  that  there  is  no  country  in 
the  world  where  the  separation  of  the  classes  is  so  ab- 
solute as  in  ours.  In  fact,  I  once  heard  a  Russian 
revolutionist,  who  had  lived  in  exile  all  over  Europe, 
say  that  he  had  never  seen  anywhere  such  a  want  of 
kindness  or  sympathy  between  rich  and  poor  as  he  had 
observed  in  America.  I  doubted  whether  he  was  right. 
But  he  believed  that,  if  it  ever  came  to  the  industrial 
revolution  with  us,  the  fight  would  be  more  uncompro- 
mising than  any  such  fight  that  the  world  had  ever  seen. 
There  was  no  respect  from  low  to  high,  he  said,  and  no 
consideration  from  high  to  low,  as  there  were  in  coun- 
tries with  traditions  and  old  associations." 

"  Well,"  said  the  banker,  "  there  may  be  something 

in  that.     Certainly,  so  far  as  the  two  forces  have  come 

into  conflict  here,  there  has  been  no  disposition,  on 

151 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

either  side,  to  '  make  war  with  the  water  of  roses.' 
It's  astonishing,  in  fact,  to  see  how  ruthless  the  fel- 
lows who  have  just  got  up  are  toward  the  fellows  who 
are  still  down.  And  the  best  of  us  have  been  up  only  a 
generation  or  two — and  the  fellows  who  are  still  down 
know  it." 

"  And  what  do  you  think  would  be  the  outcome  of 
such  a  conflict?"  I  asked,  with  my  soul  divided  be- 
tween fear  of  it  and  the  perception  of  its  excellence  as 
material.  My  fancy  vividly  sketched  the  outline  of  a 
story  which  should  forecast  the  struggle  and  its  event, 
somewhat  on  the  plan  of  the  Battle  of  Dorking. 

"  We  should  beat,"  said  the  banker,  breaking  his 
cigar-ash  off  with  his  little  finger ;  and  I  instantly  cast 
him,  with  his  ironic  calm,  for  the  part  of  a  great  patri- 
cian leader  in  my  "  Fall  of  the  Republic."  Of  course, 
I  disguised  him  somewhat,  and  travestied  his  worldly 
bonhomie  with  the  bluff  sang-froid  of  the  soldier ;  these 
things  are  easily  done. 

"  What  makes  you  think  we  should  beat  ?"  asked  the 
manufacturer,  with  a  certain  curiosity. 

"Well,  all  the  good  jingo  reasons:  we  have  got  the 
materials  for  beating.  Those  fellows  throw  away  their 
strength  whenever  they  begin  to  fight,  and  they've  been 
so  badly  generalled,  up  to  the  present  time,  that  they 
have  wanted  to  fight  at  the  outset  of  every  quarrel. 
They  have  been  beaten  in  every  quarrel,  but  still  they 
always  want  to  begin  by  fighting.  That  is  all  right. 
When  they  have  learned  enough,  to  begin  by  voting, 
then  wre  shall  have  to  look  out.  But  if  they  keep  on 
fighting,  and  always  putting  themselves  in  the  wrong 
and  getting  the  worst  of  it,  perhaps  we  can  fix  the 
voting  so  we  needn't  be  any  more  afraid  of  that  than 
we  are  of  the  fighting.  It's  astonishing  how  short- 
sighted they  are.      They  have  no  conception  of  any 

152 


A  TRAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

cure  for  their  grievances  except  more  wages  and  fewer 
hours." 

"  But,"  I  asked,  "  do  you  really  think  they  have  any 
just  grievances  ?" 

"  Of  course  not,  as  a  business  man,"  said  the  hanker. 
"  If  I  were  a  working-man,  I  should  probably  think 
differently.  But  we  will  suppose,  for  the  sake  of  argu- 
ment, that  their  day  is  too  long  and  their  pay  is  too 
short.  How  do  they  go  about  to  better  themselves  ? 
They  strike.  Well,  a  strike  is  a  fight,  and  in  a  fight, 
nowadays,  it  is  always  skill  and  money  that  win.  The 
working-men  can't  stop  till  they  have  put  themselves 
outside  of  the  public  sympathy  which  the  newspapers 
say  is  so  potent  in  their  behalf ;  I  never  saw  that  it  did 
them  the  least  good.  They  begin  by  boycotting,  and 
breaking  the  heads  of  the  men  who  want  to  work.  They 
destroy  property,  and  they  interfere  with  business — the 
two  absolutely  sacred  things  in  the  American  religion. 
Then  we  call  out  the  militia  and  shoot  a  few  of  them, 
and  their  leaders  declare  the  strike  off.  It  is  perfectly 
simple." 

"  But  will  it  be  quite  as  simple,"  I  asked,  reluc- 
tant in  behalf  of  my  projected  romance,  to  have  the 
matter  so  soon  disposed  of — "  will  it  be  quite  so  simple 
if  their  leaders  ever  persuade  the  working  -  men  to 
leave  the  militia,  as  they  threaten  to  do,  from  time  to 
time  I" 

"  ~No,  not  quite  so  simple,"  the  banker  admitted. 
"  Still,  the  fight  would  be  comparatively  simple.  In  the 
first  place,  I  doubt — though  I  won't  be  certain  about 
it — whether  there  are  a  great  many  working-men  in  the 
militia  now.  I  rather  fancy  it  is  made  up,  for  the  most 
part,  of  clerks  and  small  tradesmen  and  book-keepers, 
and  such  employes  of  business  as  have  time  and  money 
for  it.    I  may  be  mistaken." 

153 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

jSTo  one  seemed  able  to  say  whether  he  was  mistaken 
or  not ;  and,  after  waiting  a  moment,  he  proceeded :  "  I 
feel  pretty  sure  that  it  is  so  in  the  city  companies  and 
regiments,  at  any  rate,  and  that  if  every  working-man 
left  them  it  would  not  seriously  impair  their  effective- 
ness. But  when  the  working-men  have  left  the  militia, 
what  have  they  done  ?  They  have  eliminated  the  only 
thing  that  disqualifies  it  for  prompt  and  unsparing  use 
against  strikers.  As  long  as  they  are  in  it  we  might 
have  our  misgivings,  but  if  they  were  once  out  of  it 
Ave  should  have  none.  And  what  would  they  gain  ? 
They  would  not  be  allowed  to  arm  and  organize  as  an 
inimical  force.  That  was  settled  once  for  all  in  Chicago, 
in  the  case  of  the  International  Groups.  A  few  squads 
of  policemen  would  break  them  up.  Why/'  the  banker 
exclaimed,  with  his  good  -  humored  laugh,  "  how  pre- 
posterous they  are  when  you  come  to  look  at  it !  They 
are  in  the  majority,  the  immense  majority,  if  you  count 
the  farmers,  and  they  prefer  to  behave  as  if  they  were 
the  hopeless  minority.  They  say  they  want  an  eight- 
hour  law,  and  every  now  and  then  they  strike  and  try  to 
fight  it.  Why  don't  they  vote  it  ?  They  could  make  it 
the  law  in  six  months  by  such  overwhelming  numbers 
that  no  one  would  dare  to  evade  or  defy  it.  They  can 
make  any  law  they  want,  but  they  prefer  to  break  such 
laws  as  we  have.  That  'alienates  public  sympathy/  the 
newspapers  say ;  but  the  spectacle  of  their  stupidity  and 
helpless  wilfulness  is  so  lamentable  that  I  could  almost 
pity  them.  If  they  chose,  it  would  take  only  a  few 
years  to  transform  our  government  into  the  likeness  of 
anything  they  wanted.  But  they  would  rather  not  have 
what  they  want,  apparently,  if  they  can  only  keep  them- 
selves from  getting  it,  and  they  have  to  work  hard  to  do 
that!" 

"  I  suppose,"  I  said,  "  that  tEey  are  misled  by  the 

154 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

un-American  principles  and  methods  of  the  Socialists 
among  them." 

"  Why,  no,"  returned  the  banker,  "  I  shouldn't  say 
that.  As  far  as  I  understand  it,  the  Socialists  are  the 
only  fellows  among  them  who  propose  to  vote  their  ideas 
into  laws,  and  nothing  can  be  more  American  than  that. 
I  don't  believe  the  Socialists  stir  up  the  strikes — at 
least,  among  our  working-men ;  though  the  newspapers 
convict  them  of  it,  generally  without  trying  them.  The 
Socialists  seem  to  accept  the  strikes  as  the  inevitable 
outcome  of  the  situation,  and  they  make  use  of  them  as 
proofs  of  the  industrial  discontent.  But,  luckily  for  the 
status,  our  labor  leaders  are  not  Socialists,  for  your  So- 
cialist, whatever  you  may  say  against  him,  has  gen- 
erally thought  himself  into  a  Socialist.  He  knows  that 
until  the  working-men  stop  fighting,  and  get  down  to 
voting — until  they  consent  to  be  the  majority — there 
is  no  hope  for  them.  I  am  not  talking  of  anarchists, 
mind  you,  but  of  Socialists,  whose  philosophy  is  more 
law,  not  less,  and  who  look  forward  to  an  order  so  just 
that  it  can't  be  disturbed." 

"  And  what,"  the  minister  faintly  said,  "  do  you 
think  will  be  the  outcome  of  it  all?" 

"  We  had  that  question  the  other  night,  didn't  we  ? 
Our  legal  friend  here  seemed  to  feel  that  we  might  rub 
along  indefinitely  as  we  are  doing,  or  work  out  an  Altru- 
ria  of  our  own ;  or  go  back  to  the  patriarchal  stage  and 
own  our  working-men.  He  seemed  not  to  have  so  much 
faith  in  the  logic  of  events  as  I  have.  I  doubt  if  it 
is  altogether  a  woman's  logic.  Parole  femmine,  fatti 
maschi,  and  the  logic  of  events  isn't  altogether  words ; 
it's  full  of  hard  knocks,  too.  But  I'm  no  prophet.  I 
can't  forecast  the  future ;  I  prefer  to  take  it  as  it  comes. 
There's  a  little  tract  of  William  Morris's,  though  —  I 
forget  just  what  he  calls  it — that  is  full  of  curious 

155 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

and  interesting  speculation  on  this  point.  He  thinks 
that,  if  we  keep  the  road  we  are  now  going,  the  last 
state  of  labor  will  be  like  its  first,  and  it  will  be  owned." 

"  Oh,  I  don't  believe  that  will  ever  happen  in  Amer- 
ica," I  protested. 

"Why  not?"  asked  the  banker.  "Practically,  it  is 
owned  already  in  a  vastly  greater  measure  than  we 
recognize.  And  where  would  the  great  harm  be  ?  The 
new  slavery  would  not  be  like  the  old.  There  needn't 
be  irresponsible  whipping  and  separation  of  families, 
and  private  buying  and  selling.  The  proletariate  would 
probably  be  owned  by  the  state,  as  it  was  at  one  time  in 
Greece ;  or  by  large  corporations,  which  would  be  much 
more  in  keeping  with  the  genius  of  our  free  institu- 
tions ;  and  an  enlightened  public  opinion  would  cast 
safeguards  about  it  in  the  form  of  law  to  guard  it  from 
abuse.  But  it  would  be  strictly  policed,  localized,  and 
controlled.  There  would  probably  be  less  suffering 
than  there  is  now,  when  a  man  may  be  cowed  into  sub- 
mission to  any  terms  through  the  suffering  of  his  fam- 
ily; when  he  may  be  starved  out  and  turned  out  if  he 
is  unruly.  You  may  be  sure  that  nothing  of  that  kind 
would  happen  in  the  new  slavery.  We  have  not  had 
nineteen  hundred  years  of  Christianity  for  nothing." 

The  banker  paused,  and,  as  the  silence  continued,  he 
broke  it  with  a  laugh,  which  was  a  prodigious  relief  to 
my  feelings,  and  I  suppose  to  the  feelings  of  all.  I  per- 
ceived that  he  had  been  joking,  and  I  was  confirmed  in 
this  when  he  turned  to  the  Altrurian  and  laid  his  hand 
upon  his  shoulder.  "  You  see,"  he  said,  "  I'm  a  kind 
of  Altrurian  myself.  What  is  the  reason  why  we  should 
not  found  a  new  Altruria  here  on  the  lines  I've  drawn  ? 
Have  yon  never  had  philosophers  —  well,  call  them 
philanthropists ;  I  don't  mind — of  my  way  of  thinking 
among  you  ?" 

156 


A  TKAVELEK  FROM  ALTRUEIA 

"  Oh  yes,"  said  the  Altrurian.  "  At  one  time,  just 
before  we  emerged  from  the  competitive  conditions, 
there  was  much  serious  question  whether  capital  should 
not  own  labor  instead  of  labor  owning  capital.  That 
was  many  hundred  years  ago." 

"  I  am  proud  to  find  myself  such  an  advanced  think- 
er," said  the  banker.  "  And  how  came  you  to  decide 
that  labor  should  own  capital  ?" 

"  We  voted  it,"  answered  the  Altrurian. 

"  Well,"  said  the  banker,  "  our  fellows  are  still  fight- 
ing it,  and  getting  beaten." 

I  found  him  later  in  the  evening  talking  with  Mrs. 
Makely.  "  My  dear  sir,"  I  said,  "  I  liked  your  frank- 
ness with  my  Altrurian  friend  immensely;  and  it  may 
be  well  to  put  the  worst  foot  foremost;  but  what  is  the 
advantage  of  not  leaving  us  a  leg  to  stand  upon  V 

He  was  not  in  the  least  offended  at  my  boldness,  as 
I  had  feared  he  might  be,  but  he  said,  with  that  jolly 
laugh  of  his :  "  Capital !  Well,  perhaps  I  have  worked 
my  candor  a  little  too  hard ;  I  suppose  there  is  such  a 
thing.  But  don't  you  see  that  it  leaves  me  in  the  best 
possible  position  to  carry  the  war  into  Altruria  when 
we  get  him  to  open  up  about  his  native  land  ?" 

"  Ah !    If  you  can  get  him  to  do  it." 

"  Well,  we  were  just  talking  about  that.  Mrs.  Make- 
ly has  a  plan." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  lady,  turning  an  empty  chair  near 
her  own  toward  me.    "  Sit  down  and  listen." 


I  sat  down,  and  Mrs.  Makely  continued :  "  I  have 
thought  it  all  out,  and  I  want  you  to  confess  that  in  all 
practical  matters  a  woman's  brain  is  better  than  a  man's. 
Mr.  Bullion,  here,  says  it  is,  and  I  want  you  to  say  so, 
too." 

"  Yes,"  the  banker  admitted,  "  when  it  comes  down 
to  business  a  woman  is  worth  any  two  of  us." 

"  And  we  have  just  been  agreeing,"  I  coincided, 
"  that  the  only  gentlemen  among  us  are  women.  Mrs. 
Makely,  I  admit,  without  further  dispute,  that  the 
most  unworldly  woman  is  worldlier  than  the  world- 
liest man ;  and  that  in  all  practical  matters  we  fade 
into  dreamers  and  doctrinaires  beside  vou.  !Now,  go 
on." 

But  she  did  not  mean  to  let  me  off  so  easily.  She 
began  to  brag  herself  up,  as  women  do  whenever  you 
make  them  the  slightest  concession. 

"  Here,  you  men,"  she  said,  "  have  been  trying  for 
a  whole  week  to  get  something  out  of  Mr.  Homos  about 
his  country,  and  you  have  left  it  to  a  poor,  weak  woman, 
at  last,  to  think  how  to  manage  it.  I  do  believe  that  you 
get  so  much  interested  in  your  own  talk,  when  you  are 
with  him,  that  you  don't  let  him  get  in  a  word,  and 
that's  the  reason  you  haven't  found  out  anything  about 
Altruria  yet  from  him." 

In  view  of  the  manner  in  which  she  had  cut  in  at 
Mrs.  Camp's,  and  stopped  TTomos  on  the  very  verge 
of  the  only  full  and  free  confession  he  had  ever  been 

158 


A  TKAVELER  FEOM  ALTRUEIA 

near  making  about  Altruria,  I  thought  this  was  pretty 
cool ;  but,  for  fear  of  worse,  I  said  : 

"  You're  quite  right,  Mrs.  Makely.  I'm  sorry  to  say 
that  there  has  been  a  shameful  want  of  self-control 
among  us,  and  that,  if  we  learn  anything  at  all  from 
him,  it  will  be  because  you  have  taught  us  how." 

She  could  not  resist  this  bit  of  taffy.  She  scarcely 
gave  herself  time  to  gulp  it  before  she  said : 

"  Oh,  it's  very  well  to  say  that  now !  But  where 
would  you  have  been  if  I  hadn't  set  my  wits  to  work  ? 
Now,  listen !  It  just  popped  into  my  mind,  like  an  in- 
spiration, when  I  was  thinking  of  something  altogether 
different.  It  flashed  upon  me  in  an  instant :  a  good  ob- 
ject, and  a  public  occasion." 

"  Well  ?"  I  said,  finding  this  explosion  and  electrical 
inspiration  rather  enigmatical. 

"  Why,  you  know,  the  Union  Chapel,  over  in  the  vil- 
lage, is  in  a  languishing  condition,  and  the  ladies  have 
been  talking  all  summer  about  doing  something  for  it, 
getting  up  something — a  concert  or  theatricals  or  a 
dance  or  something — and  applying  the  proceeds  to  re- 
painting and  papering  the  visible  church ;  it  needs  it 
dreadfully.  But,  of  course,  those  things  are  not  exactly 
religious,  don't  you  know ;  and  a  fair  is  so  much  trouble ; 
and  such  a  bore,  when  you  get  the  articles  ready,  even ; 
and  everybody  feels  swindled ;  and  now  people  frown 
on  raffles,  so  there  is  no  use  thinking  of  them.  What 
you  want  is  something  striking.  We  did  think  of  a 
parlor-reading,  or  perhaps  ventriloquism ;  but  the  per- 
formers all  charge  so  much  that  there  wouldn't  be  any- 
thing left  after  paying  expenses." 

She  seemed  to  expert  some  sort  of  prompting  at  this 
point ;  so  I  said :  "  Well  ?" 

"  Well,"  she  repeated,  "  that  is  just  where  your  Mr. 
Homos  comes  in." 

159 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

u  Oh !    How  does  he  come  in  there  ?" 

"  Why,  get  him  to  deliver  a  Talk  on  Altruria.  As 
soon  as  he  knows  it's  for  a  good  object,  he  will  be  on 
fire  to  do  it;  and  they  must  live  so  much  in  common 
there  that  the  public  occasion  will  be  just  the  thing 
that  will  appeal  to  him." 

It  did  seem  a  good  plan  to  me,  and  I  said  so.  But 
Mrs.  Makely  was  so  much  in  love  with  it  that  she  was 
not  satisfied  with  my  modest  recognition. 

"Good?  It's  magnificent!  It's  the  very  thing! 
And  I  have  thought  it  out,  down  to  the  last  detail — " 

"  Excuse  me,"  I  interrupted.  "  Do  you  think  there 
is  sufficient  general  interest  in  the  subject,  outside  of  the 
hotel,  to  get  a  full  house  for  him  ?  I  shouldn't  like 
to  see  him  subjected  to  the  mortification  of  empty 
benches." 

"  What  in  the  world  are  you  thinking  of  %  Why, 
there  isn't  a  farm-house,  anywhere  within  ten  miles, 
where  they  haven't  heard  of  Mr.  Homos ;  and  there 
isn't  a  servant  under  this  roof,  or  in  any  of  the  board- 
ing-houses, who  doesn't  know  something  about  Altru- 
ria and  want  to  know  more.  It  seems  that  your  friend 
has  been  much  oftener  with  the  porters  and  the  stable- 
boys  than  he  has  been  with  us." 

I  had  only  too  great  reason  to  fear  so.  In  spite  of 
my  warnings  and  entreaties,  he  had  continued  to  behave 
toward  every  human  being  he  met  exactly  as  if  they 
were  equals.  He  apparently  could  not  conceive  of  that 
social  difference  which  difference  of  occupation  creates 
among  ns.  He  owned  that  he  saw  it,  and  from  the  talk 
of  our  little  group  he  knew  it  existed ;  but,  when  I  ex- 
postulated with  him  upon  some  act  in  gross  violation  of 
society  usage,  he  only  answered  that  he  could  not  im- 
agine that  what  he  saw  and  knew  could  actually  be.  It 
was  quite  impossible  to  keep  him  from  bowing  with  the 

1G0 


A  TEAVELEE  FROM  ALTRURIA 

greatest  deference  to  our  waitress ;  he  shook  hands  with 
the  head-waiter  every  morning  as  well  as  with  me; 
there  was  a  fearful  story  current  in  the  house,  that  he 
had  been  seen  running  down  one  of  the  corridors  to 
relieve  a  chambermaid  laden  with  two  heavy  water- 
pails  which  she  was  carrying  to  the  rooms  to  fill  up 
the  pitchers.  This  was  probably  not  true ;  but  I  my- 
self saw  him  helping  in  the  hotel  hay-field  one  after- 
noon, shirt-sleeved  like  any  of  the  hired  men.  He  said 
that  it  was  the  best  possible  exercise,  and  that  he  was 
ashamed  he  could  give  no  better  excuse  for  it  than  the 
fact  that  without  something  of  the  kind  he  should  suffer 
from  indigestion.  It  was  grotesque,  and  out  of  all  keep- 
ing with  a  man  of  his  cultivation  and  breeding.  He  was 
a  gentleman  and  a  scholar,  there  was  no  denying,  and 
yet  he  did  things  in  contravention  of  good  form  at  every 
opportunity,  and  nothing  I  could  say  had  any  effect 
with  him.  I  was  perplexed  beyond  measure,  the  day 
after  I  had  reproached  him  for  his  labor  in  the  hay- 
field,  to  find  him  in  a  group  of  table-girls,  who  were 
listening  while  the  head-waiter  read  aloud  to  them  in 
the  shade  of  the  house ;  there  was  a  corner  looking  tow- 
ard the  stables  which  was  given  up  to  them  by  tacit 
consent  of  the  guests  during  a  certain  part  of  the  after- 
noon. 

I  feigned  not  to  see  him,  but  I  could  not  forbear 
speaking  to  him  about  it  afterward.  He  took  it  in  good 
part,  but  he  said  he  had  been  rather  disappointed  in  the 
kind  of  literature  they  liked  and  the  comments  they 
made  on  it ;  he  had  expected  that  with  the  education 
they  had  received,  and  with  their  experience  of  the 
seriousness  of  life,  they  would  prefer  something  less 
trivial.  He  supposed,  however,  that  a  romantic  love- 
story,  where  a  poor  American  girl  marries  an  English 
lord,  formed  a  refuge  for  them  from  the  real  world 

161 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

which  promised  them  so  little  and  held  them  so  cheap. 
It  was  quite  useless  for  one  to  try  to  make  him  realize 
his  behavior  in  consorting  with  servants  as  a  kind  of 
scandal. 

The  worst  of  it  was  that  his  behavior,  as  I  could  see, 
had  already  begun  to  demoralize  the  objects  of  his  mis- 
placed politeness.  At  first  the  servants  stared  and  re- 
sented it,  as  if  it  were  some  tasteless  joke;  but  in  an 
incredibly  short  time,  when  they  saw  that  he  meant  his 
courtesy  in  good  faith,  they  took  it  as  their  due.  I  had 
always  had  a  good  understanding  with  the  head-waiter, 
and  I  thought  I  could  safely  smile  with  him  at  the 
queer  conduct  of  my  friend  toward  himself  and  his  fel- 
low-servants. To  my  astonishment  lie  said :  "  I  don't 
see  why  he  shouldn't  treat  them  as  if  they  were  ladies 
and  gentlemen.  Doesn't  he  treat  you  and  your  friends 
so?" 

It  was  impossible  to  answer  this,  and  I  could  only 
suffer  in  silence,  and  hope  the  Altrurian  would  soon  go. 
I  had  dreaded  the  moment  when  the  landlord  should 
tell  me  that  his  room  was  wanted ;  now  I  almost  desired 
it ;  but  he  never  did.  On  the  contrary,  the  Altrurian 
was  in  high  favor  with  him.  He  said  he  liked  to  see  a 
man  make  himself  pleasant  with  everybody;  and  that 
he  did  not  believe  he  had  ever  had  a  guest  in  the  house 
who  was  so  popular  all  round. 

"  Of  course,"  Mrs.  Makely  went  on,  "  I  don't  criti- 
cise him — with  his  peculiar  traditions.  I  presume  I 
should  be  just  so  myself  if  I  had  been  brought  up  in 
Altruria,  which,  thank  goodness,  I  wasn't.  But  Mr. 
Homos  is  a  perfect  dear,  and  all  the  women  in  the 
house  are  in  love  with  him,  from  the  cook's  helpers,  up 
and  down.  JSTo,  the  only  danger  is  that  there  won't 
be  room  in  the  hotel  parlors  for  all  the  people  that  will 

want  to  hear  him,  and  we  shall  have  to  make  the  ad- 

102 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

mission  something  that  will  be  prohibitive  in  most  cases. 
We  shall  have  to  make  it  a  dollar." 

"  Well,"  I  said,  "  I  think  that  will  settle  the  ques- 
tion as  far  as  the  farming  population  is  concerned. 
It's  twice  as  much  as  they  ever  pay  for  a  reserved  seat 
in  the  circus,  and  four  times  as  much  as  a  simple  ad- 
mission. I'm  afraid,  Mrs.  Makely,  you're  going  to  be 
very  few,  though  fit." 

"  Well,  I've  thought  it  all  over,  and  I'm  going  to  put 
the  tickets  at  one  dollar." 

"  Very  good.    Have  you  caught  your  hare  ?" 

"  No,  I  haven't  yet.  And  I  want  you  to  help  me 
catch  him.  What  do  you  think  is  the  best  way  to  go 
about  it  ?" 

The  banker  said  he  would  leave  us  to  the  discussion 
of  that  question,  but  Mrs.  Makely  could  count  upon 
him  in  everything  if  she  could  only  get  the  man  to 
talk.  At  the  end  of  our  conference  we  decided  to  in- 
terview the  Altrurian  together. 

I  shall  always  be  ashamed  of  the  way  that  woman 
wheedled  the  Altrurian,  when  we  found  him  the  next 
morning,  walking  up  and  down  the  piazza,  before  break- 
fast— that  is,  it  was  before  our  breakfast ;  when  we 
asked  him  to  go  in  with  us,  he  said  he  had  just  had  his 
breakfast,  and  was  waiting  for  Reuben  Camp,  who  had 
promised  to  take  him  up  as  he  passed  with  a  load  of 
hay  for  one  of  the  hotels  in  the  village. 

"  Ah,  that  reminds  me,  Mr.  Homos,"  the  unscru- 
pulous woman  began  on  him  at  once.  "  We  want  to 
interest  you  in  a  little  movement  we're  getting  up  for 
the  Union  Chapel  in  the  village.  You  know  it's  the 
church  where  all  the  different  sects  have  their  services 
alternately.  Of  course,  it's  rather  an  original  way  of 
doing,  but  there  is  sense  in  it  where  the  people  are  too 

poor  to  go  into  debt  for  different  churches,  and — " 

103 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  It's  admirable !"  said  the  Altmrian.  "  I  have 
heard  about  it  from  the  Camps.  It  is  an  emblem  of 
the  unity  which  ought  to  prevail  among  ( 'lnistians 
of  all  professions.  How  can  I  help  you,  Mrs.  Make- 
ly?" 

"  I  knew  you  would  approve  of  it  1"  she  exulted. 
"  Well,  it's  simply  this :  The  poor  little  place  has  got 
so  shabby  that  I'm  almost  ashamed  to  be  seen  going 
into  it,  for  one;  and  want  to  raise  money  enough  to 
give  it  a  new  coat  of  paint  outside  and  put  on  some 
kind  of  pretty  paper,  of  an  ecclesiastical  pattern,  on  the 
inside.  I  declare,  those  staring  white  walls,  with  the 
cracks  in  the  plastering  zigzagging  every  which  way, 
distract  me  so  that  I  can't  put  my  mind  on  the  sermon. 
Don't  you  think  that  paper,  say  of  a  Gothic  design, 
would  be  a  great  improvement  ?  I'm  sure  it  would ; 
and  it's  Mr.  Twelvemough's  idea,  too." 

I  learned  this  fact  now  for  the  first  time;  but,  with 
Mrs.  Makely's  warning  eye  upon  me,  I  could  not  say 
so,  and  I  made  what  sounded  to  me  like  a  Gothic  mur- 
mur of  acquiescence.  It  sufficed  for  Mrs.  Makely's 
purpose,  at  any  rate,  and  she  went  on,  without  giving 
the  Altrurian  a  chance  to  say  what  he  thought  the  edu- 
cational effect  of  wall-paper  would  be : 

"  Well,  the  long  and  short  of  it  is  that  we  want  you 
to  make  this  money  for  us,  Mr.  Homos." 

"  I  ?"  He  started  in  a  kind  of  horror.  "  My  dear 
lady,  I  never  made  any  money  in  my  life.  I  should 
think  it  wrong  to  make  money." 

"  In  Altruria,  yes.  We  all  know  how  it  is  in  your 
delightful  country,  and  I  assure  you  that  no  one  could 
respect  your  conscientious  scruples  more  than  I  do. 
But  you  must  remember  that  you  are  in  America 
now.  In  America  you  have  to  make  money,  or  else 
— get  left.     And  then  you  must  consider  the  object, 

1G4 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

and  all  the  good  you  can  do,  indirectly,  by  a  little 
Talk  on  Alturia." 

He  answered,  blandly :  "  A  little  Talk  on  Altruria  ? 
How  in  the  world  should  I  get  money  by  that  3" 

She  was  only  too  eager  to  explain,  and  she  did  it 
with  so  inuch  volubility  and  at  such  great  length  that 
I,  who  am  good  for  nothing  till  I  have  had  my  cup  of 
coffee  in  the  morning,  almost  perished  of  an  elucida- 
tion which  the  Altrurian  bore  with  the  sweetest  pa- 
tience. 

When  she  gave  him  a  chance  to  answer,  at  last,  he 
said :  "  I  shall  be  very  happj-  to  do  what  you  wish, 
madam." 

"  Will  you  ?"  she  screamed.  "  Oh,  I'm  so  glad ! 
You  have  been  so  slippery  about  Altruria,  you  know, 
that  I  expected  nothing  but  a  point-blank  refusal.  Of 
course,  I  knew  you  would  be  kind  about  it.  Oh,  I  can 
hardly  believe  my  senses !  You  can't  think  what  a  dear 
you  are."  I  knew  she  had  got  that  word  from  some 
English  people  who  had  been  in  the  hotel ;  and  she  was 
working  it  rather  wildly,  but  it  was  not  my  business 
to  check  her.  "  Well,  then,  all  you  have  got  to  do  is 
to  leave  the  whole  thing  to  me,  and  not  bother  about  it 
a  bit  till  I  send  and  tell  you  we  are  ready  to  listen. 
There  comes  Reuben  with  his  ox-team.  Thank  you 
so  much,  Mr.  Homos.  Xo  one  need  be  ashamed  to 
enter  the  house  of  God  " — she  said  Gawd,  in  an  access 
of  piety — "after  we  get  that  paint  and  paper  on  it; 
and  we  shall  have  them  on  before  two  Sabbaths  have 
passed  over  it." 

She  wrung  the  Altrurian's  hand ;  I  was  only  afraid 
she  was  going  to  kiss  him. 

"  There  is  but  one  stipulation  I  should  like  to  make," 

he  began. 

"  Oh,  a  thousand,"  she  cut  in. 

165 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  And  that  is,  there  shall  be  no  exclusion  from  my 
lecture  on  account  of  occupation  or  condition.  That 
is  a  thing  that  I  can  in  no  wise  countenance,  even  in 
America ;  it  is  far  more  abhorrent  to  me  even  than 
money-making-,  though  they  are  each  a  part  and  parcel 
of  the  other." 

"  I  thought  it  was  that/'  she  retorted,  joyously. 
"  And  I  can  assure  you,  Mr.  Homos,  there  shall  be 
nothing  of  that  kind.  Every  one — I  don't  care  who 
it  is  or  what  they  do  —  shall  hear  you  who  buys  a 
ticket.    Now,  will  that  do  ?" 

"  Perfectly,"  said  the  Altrurian,  and  he  let  her  wring 
his  hand  again. 

She  pushed  hers  through  my  arm  as  we  started  for 
the  dining-room,  and  leaned  over  to  whisper  jubilant- 
ly :  "  That  will  fix  it.  He  will  see  how  much  his  pre- 
cious lower  classes  care  for  Altruria  if  they  have  to 
pay  a  dollar  apiece  to  hear  about  it.  And  I  shall  keep 
faith  with  him  to  the  letter." 

I  could  not  feel  that  she  would  keep  it  in  the  spirit; 
but  I  could  only  groan  inwardly  and  chuckle  outwardly 
at  the  woman's  depravity. 

It  seemed  to  me,  though  I  could  not  approve  of  it, 
a  capital  joke,  and  so  it  seemed  to  all  the  members  of 
the  little  group  whom  I  had  made  especially  acquainted 
with  the  Altrurian.  It  is  true  that  the  minister  was 
somewhat  troubled  with  the  moral  question,  which  did 
not  leave  me  wholly  at  peace;  and  the  banker  affected 
to  find  a  question  of  taste  involved,  which  he  said  he 
must  let  me  settle,  however,  as  the  man's  host;  if  I 
could  stand  it,  he  could.  No  one  said  anything  against 
the  plan  to  Mrs.  Makely,  and  this  energetic  woman 
made  us  take  two  tickets  apiece,  as  soon  as  she  got  them 
printed,  over  in  the  village.  She  got  little  hand-bills 
printed,    and   had   them   scattered    about   through   the 

1G6 


A  TKAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

neighborhood,  at  all  the  hotels,  boarding-houses,  and 
summer  cottages,  to  give  notice  of  the  time  and  place 
of  the  talk  on  Altruria.  She  fixed  this  for  the  follow- 
ing Saturday  afternoon,  in  our  hotel  parlor;  she  had  it 
in  the  afternoon  so  as  not  to  interfere  with  the  hop  in 
the  evening;  she  put  tickets  on  sale  at  the  principal 
houses  and  at  the  village  drug-store,  and  she  made  me 
go  about  with  her  and  help  her  sell  them  at  some  of  the 
cottages  in  person. 

I  must  say  I  found  this  extremely  distasteful,  es- 
pecially where  the  people  were  not  very  willing  to  buy, 
and  she  had  to  urge  them.  They  all  admitted  the 
excellence  of  the  object,  but  they  were  not  so  sure  about 
the  means.  At  several  places  the  ladies  asked  who  was 
this  Mr.  Homos,  anyway;  and  how  did  she  know  he 
was  really  from  Altruria  ?    He  might  be  an  impostor. 

Then  Mrs.  Makely  would  put  me  forward,  and  I 
would  be  obliged  to  give  such  account  of  him  as  I 
could,  and  to  explain  just  how  and  why  he  came  to  be 
my  guest ;  with  the  cumulative  effect  of  bringing  back 
all  the  misgivings  which  I  had  myself  felt  at  the  out- 
set concerning  him,  and  which  I  had  dismissed  as  too 
fantastic. 

The  tickets  went  off  rather  slowly,  even  in  our  own 
hotel ;  people  thought  them  too  dear ;  and  some,  as  soon 
as  they  knew  the  price,  said  frankly  they  had  heard 
enough  about  Altruria  already,  and  were  sick  of  the 
whole  thing. 

Mrs.  Makely  said  this  was  quite  what  she  had  ex- 
pected of  those  people ;  that  they  were  horrid  and  stingy 
and  vulgar ;  and  she  should  see  what  face  they  would 
have  to  ask  her  to  take  tickets  when  they  were  trying  to 
get  up  something.  She  began  to  be  vexed  with  herself, 
she   confessed,    at  the   joke   she   was   playing  on   Mr. 

Homos,  and  I  noticed  that  she  put  herself  rather  de- 

1G7 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

fiantly  en  evidence  in  his  company  whenever  she  could 
in  the  presence  of  these  reluctant  ladies.  She  told  me 
she  had  not  the  courage  to  ask  the  clerk  how  many  of 
the  tickets  he  had  sold  out  of  those  she  had  left  at  the 
desk. 

One  morning,  the  third  or  fourth,  as  I  was  going  in 
to  breakfast  with  her,  the  head-waiter  stopped  her  as 
he  opened  the  door,  and  asked  modestly  if  she  could 
spare  him  a  few  tickets,  for  he  thought  he  could  sell 
some.  To  my  amazement  the  unprincipled  creature 
said:  "Why,  certainly.  How  many?"  and  instantly 
took  a  package  out  of  her  pocket,  where  she  seemed  al- 
ways to  have  them.  He  asked,  Would  twenty  be  more 
than  she  could  spare  ?  and  she  answered :  "  Not  at  all. 
Here  are  twenty-five."  and  bestowed  the  whole  package 
upon  him. 

That  afternoon  Reuben  Camp  came  lounging  up  tow- 
ard us,  where  I  sat  with  her  on  the  corner  of  the  piazza, 
and  said  that  if  she  would  like  to  let  him  try  his  luck 
with  some  tickets  for  the  Talk  he  would  see  what  he 
could  do. 

"  You  can  have  all  you  want,  Reuben,"  she  said, 
"  and  I  hope  you'll  have  better  luck  than  I  have.  I'm 
perfectly  disgusted  with  people." 

She  fished  several  packages  out  of  her  pocket  this 
time,  and  he  asked :  "  Do  vou  mean  that  I  can  have 
them  all  ?" 

"  Every  one,  and  a  band  of  music  into  the  bargain," 
she  answered,  recklessly.  But  she  seemed  a  little  daunt- 
ed when  he  quietly  took  them.  "  You  know  there  are  a 
hundred  here  ?" 

"  Yes,  I  should  like  to  see  what  I  can  do  among  the 

natives.      Then  there  is  a  construction  train  over  at 

the  junction,  and  I  know  a  lot  of  the  fellows.    I  guess 

some  of  'em  would  like  to  come." 

168 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  The  tickets  are  a  dollar  each,  you  know,"  she  sug- 
gested. 

"  That's  all  right/'  said  Camp.  "  Well,  good-after- 
noon." 

Mrs.  Makely  turned  to  ine  with  a  kind  of  gasp  as  he 
shambled  away.     "  I  don't  know  about  that." 

u  About  having  the  whole  crew  of  a  construction  train 
at  the  Talk?  I  dare  say  it  won't  be  pleasant  to  the 
ladies  who  have  bought  tickets." 

"  Oh!"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  astonishing  con- 
tempt, "  I  don't  care  what  they  think.  But  Reuben 
has  got  all  my  tickets,  and  suppose  he  keeps  them  so 
long  that  I  won't  have  time  to  sell  any,  and  then  throws 
them  back  on  my  hands?  I  know!"  she  added,  joy- 
ously. "  I  can  go  around  now  and  tell  people  that  my 
tickets  are  all  gone;  and  I'll  go  instantly  and  have  the 
clerk  hold  all  he  has  left  at  a  premium." 

She  came  back  looking  rather  blank. 

"  He  hasn't  got  a  single  one  left.  He  says  an  old 
native  came  in  this  morning  and  took  every  last  one  of 
them — he  doesn't  remember  just  how  many.  I  believe 
they're  going  to  speculate  on  them;  and  if  Reuben 
Camp  serves  me  a  trick  like  that —  Why,"  she  broke 
off,  "  I  believe  I'll  speculate  on  them  myself.  I  should 
like  to  know  why  I  shouldn't.  Oh,  I  should  just  like 
to  make  some  of  those  creatures  pay  double,  or  treble, 
for  the  chances  they've  refused.  Ah,  Mrs.  Bulkham," 
she  called  out  to  a  lady  who  was  coming  down  the 
veranda  toward  us,  "  you'll  be  glad  to  know  I've  got 
rid  of  all  my  tickets.    Such  a  relief !" 

"  You  have  V  Mrs.  Bulkham  retorted. 

"  Every  one." 

"  I  thought,"  said  Mrs.  Bulkham,  "  that  you  under- 
stood I  wanted  one  for  my  daughter  and  myself,  if  she 
came." 

169 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  I  certainly  didn't,"  said  Mrs.  Makely,  with  a  wink 
of  concentrated  wickedness  at  me.  "  But,  if  you  do, 
you  will  have  to  say  so  now,  without  any  ifs  or  ands 
about  it;  and  if  any  of  the  tickets  come  hack — I  let 
friends  have  a  few  on  sale — I  will  give  you  two." 

"  Well,  I  do,"  said  Mrs.  Bulkham,  after  a  moment. 

"  Very  well ;  it  will  he  five  dollars  for  the  two.  I  feel 
hound  to  get  all  I  can  for  the  cause.  Shall  I  put  your 
name  down?" 

"  Yes,"  said  Mrs.  Bulkham,  rather  crossly ;  hut  Mrs. 
Makely  inscribed  her  name  on  her  tablets  with  a  radiant 
amiability,  which  suffered  no  eclipse  when,  within  the 
next  fifteen  minutes,  a  dozen  other  ladies  hurried  up 
and  bought  in  at  the  same  rate. 

I  could  not  stand  it,  and  I  got  up  to  go  away,  feeling 
extremely  particeps  criminis.  Mrs.  Makely  seemed  to 
have  a  conscience  as  light  as  air. 

"  If  Reuben  Camp  or  the  head-waiter  don't  bring 
back  some  of  those  tickets,  I  don't  know  what  I  shall  do. 
I  shall  have  to  put  chairs  into  the  aisles  and  charge 
five  dollars  apiece  for  as  many  people  as  I  can  crowd 
in  there.  I  never  knew  anything  so  perfectly  provi- 
dential." 

"  I  envy  you  the  ability  to  see  it  in  that  light,  Mrs. 
Makely,"  I  said,  faint  at  heart.  "  Suppose  Camp 
crowds  the  place  full  of  his  trainmen,  how  will  the 
ladies  that  you've  sold  tickets  to  at  five  dollars  apiece 
like  it?" 

"  Pooh !  What  do  I  care  how  they  like  it !  Horrid 
things !  And  for  repairs  on  the  house  of  Gawd,  it's  the 
same  as  being  in  church,  where  everybody  is  equal." 

The  time  passed.  Mrs.  Makely  sold  chances  to  all 
the  ladies  in  the  house;  on  Friday  night  Reuben  Camp 
brought  her  a  hundred  dollars;  the  head-waiter  had 
already  paid  in  twenty-five.    "  I  didn't  dare  to  ask  them 

170 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

if  they  speculated  on  them/'  she  confided  to  me.  "  Do 
you  suppose  they  would  have  the  conscience  ?" 

They  had  secured  the  large  parlor  of  the  hotel,  where 
the  young  people  danced  in  the  evening,  and  where  en- 
tertainments were  held,  of  the  sort  usually  given  in  sum- 
mer hotels;  we  had  already  had  a  dramatic  reading,  a 
time  with  the  phonograph,  an  exhibition  of  necromancy, 
a  concert  by  a  college  glee  club,  and  I  do  not  know 
what  else.  The  room  would  hold  perhaps  two  hundred 
people,  if  they  were  closely  seated,  and,  by  her  own 
showing,  Mrs.  Makely  had  sold  above  two  hundred  and 
fifty  tickets  and  chances.  All  Saturday  forenoon  she 
consoled  herself  with  the  belief  that  a  great  many  peo- 
ple at  the  other  hotels  and  cottages  had  bought  scats 
merely  to  aid  the  cause,  and  would  not  really  come ;  she 
estimated  that  at  least  fifty  would  stay  away;  but,  if 
Reuben  Camp  had  sold  his  tickets  among  the  natives, 
we  might  expect  every  one  of  them  to  come  and  get  his 
money's  worth ;  she  did  not  dare  to  ask  the  head-waiter 
how  he  had  got  rid  of  his  twenty-five  tickets. 

The  hour  set  for  the  Talk  to  begin  was  three  o'clock, 
so  that  people  could  have  their  naps  comfortably  over, 
after  the  one-o'clock  dinner,  and  be  just  in  the  right 
frame  of  mind  for  listening.  But  long  before  the  ap- 
pointed time  the  people  who  dine  at  twelve,  and  never 
take  an  afternoon  nap,  began  to  arrive,  on  foot,  in 
farm-wagons,  smart  buggies,  mud-crusted  carryalls,  and 
all  manner  of  ramshackle  vehicles.  They  arrived  as 
if  coming  to  a  circus,  old  husbands  and  wives,  young 
couples  and  their  children,  pretty  girls  and  their  fel- 
lows, and  hitched  their  horses  to  the  tails  of  their 
wagons,  and  began  to  make  a  picnic  lunch  in  the  shadow 
of  the  grove  lying  between  the  hotel  and  the  station. 
About  two  we  heard  the  snorting  of  a  locomotive  at  a 

time  when  no  train  was  due,  and  a  construction  train 

171 


A  TKAVELEK  EKOM  ALTKUKIA 

came  in  view,  with  the  men  waving  their  handkerchiefs 
from  the  windows,  and  apparently  ready  for  all  the  fun 
there  was  to  be  in  the  thing.  Some  of  them  had  a  small 
flag  in  each  hand,  the  American  Stars  and  Stripes  and 
the  white  flag  of  Altruria,  in  compliment  to  my  guest, 
I  suppose.  A  good  many  of  the  farmers  came  over  to 
the  hotel  to  buy  tickets,  which  they  said  they  expected 
to  get  after  they  came,  and  Mrs.  Makely  was  obliged  to 
pacify  them  with  all  sorts  of  lying  promises.  From 
moment  to  moment  she  was  in  consultation  with  the 
landlord,  who  decided  to  throw  open  the  dining-room, 
which  connected  with  the  parlor,  so  as  to  allow  the  help 
and  the  neighbors  to  hear  without  incommoding  the  ho- 
tel guests.  She  said  that  this  took  a  great  burden  off 
her  mind,  and  that  now  she  should  feel  perfectly  easy, 
for  now  no  one  could  complain  about  being  mixed  up 
with  the  servants  and  the  natives,  and  yet  every  one 
could  hear  perfectly. 

She  could  not  rest  until  she  had  sent  for  Homos  and 
told  him  of  this  admirable  arrangement.  I  did  not 
know  whether  to  be  glad  or  not  when  he  instantly  told 
her  that,  if  there  was  to  be  any  such  separation  of  his 
auditors,  in  recognition  of  our  class  distinctions,  he 
must  refuse  to  speak  at  all. 

"  Then  what  in  the  world  are  we  to  do  ?"  she  wailed 
out,  and  the  tears  came  into  her  eyes. 

"  Have  you  got  the  money  for  all  your  tickets  ?"  he 
asked,  with  a  sort  of  disgust  for  the  whole  transaction 
in  his  tone. 

"  Yes,  and  more,  too.  I  don't  believe  there's  a  soul, 
in  the  hotel  or  out  of  it,  that  hasn't  paid  at  least  a 
dollar  to  hear  you ;  and  that  makes  it  so  very  embarrass- 
ing. Oh,  dear  Mr.  Homos!  You  won't  be  so  im- 
placably high-principled  as  all  that!     Think  that  you 

are  doing  it  for  the  house  of  Gawd." 

172 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

The  woman  made  me  sick. 

"  Then  no  one,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  can  feel  ag- 
grieved, or  unfairly  used,  if  I  say  what  I  have  to  say 
in  the  open  air,  where  all  can  listen  equally,  without 
any  manner  of  preference  or  distinction.  We  will  go 
up  to  the  edge  of  the  grove  overlooking  the  tennis- 
court,  and  hold  our  meeting  there,  as  the  Altrurian 
meetings  are  always  held,  with  the  sky  for  a  roof,  and 
with  no  walls  but  the  horizon." 

"The  very  thing!"  cried  Mrs.  Makely.  "Who 
would  ever  have  thought  you  were  so  practical,  Mr. 
Homos  ?  I  don't  believe  you're  an  Altrurian,  after  all ; 
I  believe  you  are  an  American  in  disguise." 

The  Altrurign  turned  away,  without  making  any  re- 
sponse to  this  flattering  attribution  of  our  nationality 
to  him ;  but  Mrs.  Makely  had  not  waited  for  any.  She 
had  flown  off,  and  I  next  saw  her  attacking  the  land- 
lord, with  such  apparent  success  that  he  slapped  him- 
self on  the  leg  and  vanished,  and  immediately  the 
porters  and  bell-boys  and  all  the  men-servants  began 
carrying  out  chairs  to  the  tennis-court,  which  was  al- 
ready well  set  round  with  benches.  In  a  little  while  the 
whole  space  was  covered,  and  settees  were  placed  well 
up  the  ground  toward  the  grove. 

By  half-past  two  the  guests  of  the  hotel  came  out  and 
took  the  best  seats,  as  by  right,  and  the  different  tally- 
hoes  and  mountain  wagons  began  to  arrive  from  the 
other  hotels,  with  their  silly  hotel  cries,  and  their  gay 
groups  dismounted  and  dispersed  themselves  over  the 
tennis-court  until  all  the  chairs  were  taken.  It  was 
fine  to  see  how  the  natives  and  the  trainmen  and  the 
hotel  servants,  with  an  instinctive  perception  of  the 
proprieties,  yielded  these  places  to  their  superiors,  and, 
after  the  summer  folks  Avere  all  seated,  scattered  them- 
selves on  the  grass  and  the  pine-needles  about  the  border 

"  173 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

of  the  grove.  I  should  have  liked  to  instance  the  fact 
to  the  Altrurian,  as  a  proof  that  this  sort  of  subordina- 
tion was  a  part  of  human  nature,  and  that  a  principle 
which  pervaded  our  civilization,  after  the  democratic 
training  of  our  whole  national  life,  must  be  divinely  im- 
planted. But  there  was  no  opportunity  for  me  to  speak 
with  him  after  the  fact  had  accomplished  itself,  for 
by  this  time  he  had  taken  his  place  in  front  of  a  little 
clump  of  low  pines  and  was  waiting  for  the  assembly 
to  quiet  itself  before  he  began  to  speak.  I  do  not  think 
there  could  have  been  less  than  five  hundred  present, 
and  the  scene  had  that  accidental  picturesqueness  which 
results  from  the  grouping  of  all  sorts  of  faces  and  cos- 
tumes. Many  of  our  ladies  had  pretty  hats  and  brilliant 
parasols,  but  I  must  say  that  the  soberer  tone  of  some 
of  the  old  farm-wives'  brown  calicoes  and  outdated 
bonnets  contributed  to  enrich  the  coloring,  and  there 
was  a  certain  gayety  in  the  sunny  glisten  of  the  men's 
straw  hats  everywhere  that  was  very  good. 

The  sky  overhead  was  absolutely  stainless,  and  the 
light  of  the  cool  afternoon  sun  streamed  upon  the 
slopes  of  the  solemn  mountains  to  the  east.  The  tall 
pines  in  the  background  blackened  themselves  against 
the  horizon ;  nearer  they  showed  more  and  more  de- 
cidedly their  bluish  green,  and  the  yellow  of  the  newly 
fallen  needles  painted  their  aisles  deep  into  the  airy 
shadows. 

A  little  wind  stirred  their  tops,  and  for  a  moment, 
just  before  the  Altrurian  began  to  speak,  drew  from 
them  an  organ-tone  that  melted  delicately  away  as  his 
powerful  voice  rose. 


XI 


"  I  could  not  give  you  a  clear  account  of  the  pres- 
ent state  of  things  in  my  country,"  the  Altrurian  began, 
"  without  first  telling  you  something  of  our  conditions 
before  the  time  of  our  Evolution.  It  seems  to  be  the 
law  of  all  life  that  nothing  can  come  to  fruition  with- 
out dying  and  seeming  to  make  an  end.  It  must  be 
sown  in  corruption  before  it  can  be  raised  in  incor- 
ruption.  The  truth  itself  must  perish  to  our  senses 
before  it  can  live  to  our  souls ;  the  Son  of  Man  must 
suffer  upon  the  cross  before  we  can  know  the  Son  of 
God. 

"  It  was  so  with  His  message  to  the  world,  which 
we  received  in  the  old  time  as  an  ideal  realized  by  the 
earliest  Christians,  who  loved  one  another  and  who 
had  all  things  common.  The  apostle  cast  away  upon 
our  heathen  coasts  won  us  with  the  story  of  this  first 
Christian  republic,  and  he  established  a  commonwealth 
of  peace  and  good-will  among  us  in  its  likeness.  That 
commonwealth  perished,  jnst  as  its  prototype  perished, 
or  seemed  to  perish  ;  and  long  ages  of  civic  and  economic 
warfare  succeeded,  when  every  man's  hand  was  against 
his  neighbor,  and  might  was  the  rule  that  got  itself 
called  right.  Religion  ceased  to  be  the  hope  of  this 
world,  and  became  the  vague  promise  of  the  next.  We 
descended  into  the  valley  of  the  shadow,  and  dwelt 
amid  chaos  for  ages  before  we  groped  again  into  the 
light. 

"  The  first  glimmerings   were  few   and   indistinct, 

"l75 


A  TEAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

but  men  formed  themselves  about  the  luminous  points 
here  and  there,  and,  when  these  broke  and  dispersed  into 
lesser  gleams,  still  men  formed  themselves  about  each  of 
them.  There  arose  a  system  of  things  better,  indeed, 
than  that  darkness,  but  full  of  war  and  lust  and  greed, 
in  which  the  weak  rendered  homage  to  the  strong,  and 
served  them  in  the  field  and  in  the  camp,  and  the  strong 
in  turn  gave  the  weak  protection  against  the  other 
strong.  It  was  a  juggle  in  which  the  weak  did  not  see 
that  their  safety  was,  after  all,  from  themselves ;  but  it 
was  an  image  of  peace,  however  false  and  fitful,  and  it 
endured  for  a  time.  It  endured  for  a  limited  time,  if 
we  measure  by  the  life  of  the  race;  it  endured  for  an 
unlimited  time  if  we  measure  by  the  lives  of  the  men 
who  were  born  and  died  while  it  endured. 

"  But  that  disorder,  cruel  and  fierce  and  stupid,  which 
endured  because  it  sometimes  masked  itself  as  order, 
did  at  last  pass  away.  Here  and  there  one  of  the 
strong  overpowered  the  rest ;  then  the  strong  became 
fewer  and  fewer,  and  in  their  turn  they  all  yielded  to 
a  supreme  lord,  and  throughout  the  land  there  was  one 
rule,  as  it  was  called  then,  or  one  misrule,  as  we  should 
call  it  now.  This  rule,  or  this  misrule,  continued  for 
ages  more ;  and  again,  in  the  immortality  of  the  race, 
men  toiled  and  struggled,  and  died  without  the  hope  of 
better  things. 

"  Then  the  time  came  when  the  long  nightmare  was 
burst  with  the  vision  of  a  future  in  which  all  men  were 
the  law,  and  not  one  man,  or  any  less  number  of  men 
than  all. 

"  The  poor  dumb  beast  of  humanity  rose,  and  the 
throne  tumbled,  and  the  sceptre  was  broken,  and  the 
crown  rolled  away  into  that  darkness  of  the  past.  We 
thought  that  heaven  had  descended  to  us,  and  that  lib- 
erty, equality,  and  fraternity  were  ours.     We  could  not 

176 


A  TRAVELER  PROM  ALTRURIA 

see  what  should  again  alienate  lis  from  one  another,  or 
how  one  brother  could  again  oppress  another.  With  a 
free  field  and  no  favor  we  believed  we  should  prosper 
on  together,  and  there  would  be  peace  and  plenty  for 
all.  We  had  the  republic  again  after  so  many  ages  now, 
and  the  republic,  as  we  knew  it  in  our  dim  annals,  was 
brotherhood  and  universal  happiness.  All  but  a  very 
few,  who  prophesied  evil  of  our  lawless  freedom,  were 
wrapped  in  a  delirium  of  hope.  Men's  minds  and  men's 
hands  were  suddenly  released  to  an  activity  unheard 
of  before.  Invention  followed  invention ;  our  rivers 
and  seas  became  the  warp  of  commerce  where  the  steam- 
sped  shuttles  carried  the  woof  of  enterprise  to  and  fro 
with  tireless  celerity ;  machines  to  save  labor  multi- 
plied themselves  as  if  they  had  been  procreative  forces, 
and  wares  of  every  sort  were  produced  with  incredible 
swiftness  and  cheapness.  Money  seemed  to  flow  from 
the  ground ;  vast  fortunes  '  rose  like  an  exhalation,'  as 
your  Milton  says. 

"  At  first  we  did  not  know  that  they  were  the  breath 
of  the  nethermost  pits  of  hell,  and  that  the  love  of 
money,  which  was  becoming  universal  with  us,  was 
filling  the  earth  with  the  hate  of  men.  It  was  long 
before  we  came  to  realize  that  in  the  depths  of  our 
steamships  were  those  who  fed  the  fires  with  their 
lives,  and  that  our  mines  from  which  we  dug  our 
wealth  were  the  graves  of  those  who  had  died  to  the 
free  light  and  air,  without  finding  the  rest  of  death. 
We  did  not  see  that  the  machines  for  saving  labor  were 
monsters  that  devoured  women  and  children,  and  wasted 
men  at  the  bidding  of  the  power  which  no  man  must 
touch. 

"  That  is,  we  thought  we  must  not  touch  it,  for  it 
called  itself  prosperity  and  wealth  and  the  public  good, 
and  it  said  that  it  gave  bread,  and  it  impudently  bade 

177 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

the  toiling  myriads  consider  what  would  become  of 
them  if  it  took  away  their  means  of  wearing  themselves 
out  in  its  service.  It  demanded  of  the  state  absolute 
immunity  and  absolute  impunity,  the  right  to  do  its 
will  wherever  and  however  it  would,  without  question 
from  the  people  who  were  the  final  law.  It  had  its 
way,  and  under  its  rule  we  became  the  richest  people 
under  the  sun.  The  Accumulation,  as  we  called  this 
power,  because  we  feared  to  call  it  by  its  true  name, 
rewarded  its  own  with  gains  of  twenty,  of  a  hundred, 
of  a  thousand  per  cent.,  and  to  satisfy  its  need,  to  pro- 
duce the  labor  that  operated  its  machines,  there  came 
into  existence  a  hapless  race  of  men  who  bred  their 
kind  for  its  service,  and  whose  little  ones  were  its  prey 
almost  from  their  cradles.  Then  the  infamy  became 
too  great,  and  the  law,  the  voice  of  the  people,  so  long 
guiltily  silent,  was  lifted  in  behalf  of  those  who  had  no 
helper.  The  Accumulation  came  under  control  for  the 
first  time,  and  could  no  longer  work  its  slaves  twenty 
hours  a  day  amid  perils  to  life  and  limb  from  its  ma- 
chinery and  in  conditions  that  forbade  them  decency 
and  morality.  The  time  of  a  hundred  and  a  thousand 
per  cent,  passed ;  but  still  the  Accumulation  demanded 
immunity  and  impunity,  and,  in  spite  of  its  conviction 
of  the  enormities  it  had  practised,  it  declared  itself  the 
only  means  of  civilization  and  progress.  It  began  to 
give  out  that  it  was  timid,  though  its  history  was  full 
of  the  boldest  frauds  and  crimes,  and  it  threatened  to 
withdraw  itself  if  it  were  ruled  or  even  crossed ;  and 
again  it  had  its  way,  and  we  seemed  to  prosper  more 
and  more.  The  land  was  filled  with  cities  where  the 
rich  flaunted  their  splendor  in  palaces,  and  the  poor 
swarmed  in  squalid  tenements.  The  country  was  drain- 
ed of  its  life  and  force,  to  feed  the  centres  of  commerce 

and  industry.    The  whole  land  was  bound  together  with 

178 


A  TEAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

a  network  of  iron  roads  that  linked  the  factories  and 
founderies  to  the  fields  and  mines,  and  blasted  the  land- 
scape with  the  enterprise  that  spoiled  the  lives  of  men. 

"  Then,  all  at  once,  when  its  work  seemed  perfect 
and  its  dominion  sure,  the  Accumulation  was  stricken 
with  consciousness  of  the  lie  always  at  its  heart.  It 
had  hitherto  cried  out  for  a  free  field  and  no  favor,  for 
unrestricted  competition ;  but,  in  truth,  it  had  never 
prospered  except  as  a  monopoly.  Whenever  and  wher- 
ever competition  had  play  there  had  been  nothing  but 
disaster  to  the  rival  enterprises,  till  one  rose  over  the 
rest.     Then  there  was  prosperity  for  that  one. 

"  The  Accumulation  began  to  act  upon  its  new  con- 
sciousness. The  iron  roads  united ;  the  warring  in- 
dustries made  peace,  each  kind  under  a  single  leader- 
ship. Monopoly,  not  competition,  was  seen  to  be  the 
beneficent  means  of  distributing  the  favors  and  bless- 
ings of  the  Accumulation  to  mankind.  But,  as  before, 
there  was  alternately  a  glut  and  dearth  of  things,  and 
it  often  happened  that  when  starving  men  went  ragged 
through  the  streets  the  storehouses  were  piled  full  of 
rotting  harvests  that  the  farmers  toiled  from  dawn  till 
dusk  to  grow,  and  the  warehouses  fed  the  moth  with  the 
stuffs  that  the  operative  had  woven  his  life  into  at  his 
loom.  Then  followed,  witli  a  blind  and  mad  succession, 
a  time  of  famine,  when  money  could  not  buy  the  super- 
abundance that  vanished,  none  knew  how  or  why. 

"  The  money  itself  vanished  from  time  to  time,  and 
disappeared  into  the  vaults  of  the  Accumulation,  for 
no  better  reason  than  that  for  which  it  poured  itself 
out  at  other  times.  Our  theory  was  that  the  people — 
that  is  to  say,  the  government  of  the  people — made  the 
people's  money,  but,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Accumu- 
lation made  it  and  controlled  it  and  juggled  with  it; 

and  now  you  saw  it,  and  now  you  did  not  see  it.     The 

179 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

government  made  gold  coins,  but  the  people  had  nothing 
but  the  paper  money  that  the  Accumulation  made.  But 
whether  there  was  scarcity  or  plenty,  the  failures  went 
on  with  a  continuous  ruin  that  nothing  could  check, 
while  our  larger  economic  life  proceeded  in  a  series  of 
violent  shocks,  which  we  called  financial  panics,  fol- 
lowed by  long  periods  of  exhaustion  and  recupera- 
tion. 

There  was  no  law  in  our  economy,  but  as  the  Accumu- 
lation had  never  cared  for  the  nature  of  law,  it  did  not 
trouble  itself  for  its  name  in  our  order  of  things.  It 
had  always  bought  the  law  it  needed  for  its  own  use, 
first  through  the  voter  at  the  polls  in  the  more  primitive 
days,  and  then,  as  civilization  advanced,  in  the  legis- 
latures and  the  courts.  But  the  corruption  even  of  these 
methods  was  far  surpassed  when  the  era  of  consolidation 
came,  and  the  necessity  for  statutes  and  verdicts  and  de- 
cisions became  more  stringent.  Then  we  had  such  a 
burlesque  of — " 

"  Look  here !"  a  sharp,  nasal  voice  snarled  across  the 
rich,  full  pipe  of  the  Altrurian,  and  we  all  instantly 
looked  there.  The  voice  came  from  an  old  farmer, 
holding  himself  stiffly  up,  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets 
and  his  lean  frame  bent  toward  the  speaker.  "  When 
are  you  goin'  to  get  to  Altrury?  We  know  all  about 
Ameriky." 

He  sat  down  again,  and  it  was  a  moment  before  the 
crowd  caught  on.  Then  a  yell  of  delight  and  a  roar 
of  volleyed  laughter  went  up  from  the  lower  classes, 
in  which,  I  am  sorry  to  say,  my  friend  the  banker 
joined,  so  far  as  the  laughter  was  concerned.  "  Good ! 
That's  it!  First-rate!"  came  from  a  hundred  vulgar 
throats. 

"  Isn't  it  a  perfect  shame  ?"  Mrs.  Makely  demanded. 

"  I  think  some  of  you  gentlemen  ought  to  say  some- 

180 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

thing.  What  will  Mr.  Homos  think  of  our  civilization 
if  we  let  such  interruptions  go  unrebuked  ?" 

She  was  sitting  between  the  banker  and  myself,  and 
her  indignation  made  him  laugh  more  and  more.  "  Oh, 
it  serves  him  right,"  he  said.  "  Don't  you  see  that  he 
is  hoist  with  his  own  petard  ?  Let  him  alone.  He's  in 
the  hands  of  his  friends." 

The  Altrurian  waited  for  the  tumult  to  die  away, 
and  then  he  said,  gently :  "  I  don't  understand." 

The  old  farmer  jerked  himself  to  his  feet  again. 
"  It's  like  this :  I  paid  my  dolla'  to  hear  about  a  coun- 
try where  there  wa'n't  no  co'perations  nor  no  monop'lies 
nor  no  buyin'  up  cou'ts;  and  I  ain't  agoin'  to  have  no 
allegory  shoved  down  my  throat,  instead  of  a  true  his- 
tory, noways.  I  know  all  about  how  it  is  here.  Fi'st, 
run  their  line  through  your  backya'd,  and  then  kill  off 
your  cattle,  and  keep  kerryin'  on  it  up  from  cou't  to 
cou't,  till  there  ain't  hide  or  hair  on  'em  left — " 

"  Oh,  set  down,  set  down  !  Let  the  man  go  on  !  He'll 
make  it  all  right  with  you,"  one  of  the  construction 
gang  called  out;  but  the  farmer  stood  his  ground,  and 
I  could  hear  him  through  the  laughing  and  shouting 
keep  saying  something,  from  time  to  time,  about  not 
wanting  to  pay  no  dolla'  for  no  talk  about  co'perations 
and  monop'lies  that  we  had  right  under  our  own  noses 
the  whole  while,  and,  you  might  say,  in  your  very  bread- 
troughs  ;  till,  at  last,  I  saw  Reuben  Camp  make  his  way 
toward  him,  and,  after  an  energetic  expostulation,  turn 
to  leave  him  again. 

Then  he  faltered  out,  "  I  guess  it's  all  right,"  and 
dropped  out  of  sight  in  the  group  he  had  risen  from.  I 
fancied  his  wife  scolding  him  there,  and  all  but  shaking 
him  in  public 

"  I  should  be  very  sorry,"  the  Altrurian  proceeded, 

"  to  have  any  one  believe  that  I  have  not  been  giving 

181 


A  TEAVELEE  FEOM  ALTRURIA 

you  a  bona  fide  account  of  conditions  in  my  country 
before  the  Evolution,  when  we  first  took  the  name  of 
Altruria  in  our  great,  peaceful  campaign  against  the 
Accumulation.  As  for  offering  you  any  allegory  or 
travesty  of  your  own  conditions,  I  will  simply  say  that 
I  do  not  know  them  well  enough  to  do  so  intelligently. 
But,  whatever  they  are,  God  forbid  that  the  likeness 
which  you  seem  to  recognize  should  ever  go  so  far  as 
the  desperate  state  of  things  which  we  finally  reached. 
I  will  not  trouble  you  with  details ;  in  fact,  I  have  been 
afraid  that  I  had  already  treated  of  our  affairs  too  ab- 
stractly; but,  since  your  own  experience  furnishes  you 
the  means  of  seizing  my  meaning,  I  will  go  on  as  be- 
fore. 

"  You  will  understand  me  when  I  explain  that  the 
Accumulation  had  not  erected  itself  into  the  sovereign- 
ty with  us  unopposed.  The  working-men  who  suffered 
most  from  its  oppression  had  early  begun  to  band  them- 
selves against  it,  with  the  instinct  of  self-preservation, 
first  trade  by  trade  and  art  by  art,  and  then  in  con- 
gresses and  federations  of  the  trades  and  arts,  until 
finally  they  enrolled  themselves  in  one  vast  union,  which 
included  all  the  working-men  whom  their  necessity  or 
their  interest  did  not  leave  on  the  side  of  the  Accumu- 
lation. This  beneficent  and  generous  association  of  the 
weak  for  the  sake  of  the  weakest  did  not  accomplish 
itself  fully  till  the  baleful  instinct  of  the  Accumulation 
had  reduced  the  monopolies  to  one  vast  monopoly,  till 
the  stronger  had  devoured  the  weaker  among  its  mem- 
bers, and  the  supreme  agent  stood  at  the  head  of  our 
affairs,  in  everything  but  name,  our  imperial  ruler. 
We  had  hugged  so  long  the  delusion  of  each  man  for 
himself  that  we  had  suffered  all  realty  to  be  taken 
from  us.     The  Accumulation  owned  the  land  as  well  as 

the  mines  under  it  and  the  shops  over  it ;  the  Accumula- 

182 


A  TKAVELEK  FKOM  ALTRURIA 

tion  owned  the  seas  and  the  ships  that  sailed  the  seas, 
and  the  fish  that  swam  in  their  depths ;  it  owned  trans- 
portation and  distribution,  and  the  wares  and  products 
that  were  to  be  carried  to  and  fro;  and,  by  a  logic  ir- 
resistible and  inexorable,  the  Accumulation  was,  and 
we  were  not. 

"  But  the  Accumulation,  too,  had  forgotten  some- 
thing. It  had  found  it  so  easy  to  buy  legislatures  and 
courts  that  it  did  not  trouble  itself  about  the  polls.  It 
left  us  the  suffrage,  and  let  us  amuse  ourselves  with 
the  periodical  election  of  the  political  clay  images  which 
it  manipulated  and  moulded  to  any  shape  and  effect  at 
its  pleasure.  The  Accumulation  knew  that  it  was  the 
sovereignty,  whatever  figure-head  we  called  president  or 
governor  or  mayor:  we  had  other  names  for  these  of- 
ficials, but  I  use  their  analogues  for  the  sake  of  clear- 
ness, and  I  hope  my  good  friend  over  there  will  not 
think  I  am  still  talking  about  America." 

"  No,"  the  old  farmer  called  back,  without  rising, 
"  we  hain't  got  there  quite  yit." 

"  ~No  hurry,"  said  a  trainman.  "  All  in  good  time. 
Go  on !"  he  called  to  the  Altrurian. 

The  Altrurian  resumed : 

"  There  had  been,  from  the  beginning,  an  almost 
ceaseless  struggle  between  the  Accumulation  and  the 
proletariate.  The  Accumulation  always  said  that  it  was 
the  best  friend  of  the  proletariate,  and  it  denounced, 
through  the  press  which  it  controlled,  the  proletarian 
leaders  who  taught  that  it  was  the  enemy  of  the  pro- 
letariate, and  who  stirred  up  strikes  and  tumults  of  all 
sorts,  for  higher  wages  and  fewer  hours.  But  the 
friend  of  the  proletariate,  whenever  occasion  served, 
treated  the  proletariate  like  a  deadly  enemy.  In  sea- 
sons of  overproduction,  as  it  was  called,  it  locked  the 
workmen  out  or  laid  them  off,  and  left  their  families 

183 


A  TEAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

to  starve,  or  ran  light  work  and  claimed  the  credit  of 
public  benefactors  for  running  at  all.  It  sought  every 
chance  to  reduce  wages;  it  had  laws  passed  to  forbid 
or  cripple  the  workmen  in  their  strikes;  and  the  judges 
convicted  them  of  conspiracy,  and  wrested  the  statutes 
to  their  hurt,  in  cases  where  there  had  been  no  thought 
of  embarrassing  them,  even  among  the  legislators.  God 
forbid  that  you  should  ever  come  to  such  a  pass  in 
America;  but,  if  you  ever  should,  God  grant  that  you 
may  find  your  way  out  as  simply  as  we  did  at  last,  when 
freedom  had  perished  in  everything  but  name  among  us, 
and  justice  had  become  a  mockery. 

"  The  Accumulation  had  advanced  so  smoothly,  so 
lightly,  in  all  its  steps  to  the  supreme  power,  and  had 
at  last  so  thoroughly  quelled  the  uprisings  of  the  pro- 
letariate, that  it  forgot  one  thing :  it  forgot  the  despised 
and  neglected  suffrage.  The  ballot,  because  it  had  been 
so  easy  to  annul  its  effect,  had  been  left  in  the  people's 
hands ;  and  when,  at  last,  the  leaders  of  the  proletariate 
ceased  to  counsel  strikes,  or  any  form  of  resistance  to 
the  Accumulation  that  could  be  tormented  into  the  like- 
ness of  insurrection  against  the  government,  and  began 
to  urge  them  to  attack  it  in  the  political  way,  the  deluge 
that  swept  the  Accumulation  out  of  existence  came 
trickling  and  creeping  over  the  land.  It  appeared  first 
in  the  country,  a  spring  from  the  ground ;  then  it  gath- 
ered head  in  the  villages ;  then  it  swelled  to  a  torrent  in 
the  cities.  I  cannot  stay  to  trace  its  course;  but  sud- 
denly, one  day,  when  the  Accumulation's  abuse  of  a 
certain  power  became  too  gross,  it  was  voted  out  of  that 
power.  You  will  perhaps  be  interested  to  know  that  it 
was  with  the  telegraphs  that  the  rebellion  against  the 
Accumulation  began,  and  the  government  was  forced, 
by  the  overwhelming  majority  which  the  proletariate 
sent  to  our  parliament,  to  assume  a  function  which  the 

184 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

Accumulation  had  impudently  usurped.  Then  the 
transportation  of  smaller  and  more  perishable  wares — " 

"Yes,"  a  voice  called — "  express  business.     Go  on!" 

"  Was  legislated  a  function  of  the  post-office,"  the 
Altrurian  went  on.  "  Then  all  transportation  was  taken 
into  the  hands  of  the  political  government,  which  had 
always  been  accused  of  great  corruption  in  its  admin- 
istration, but  which  showed  itself  immaculately  pure 
compared  with  the  Accumulation.  The  common  owner- 
ship of  mines  necessarily  followed,  with  an  allotment  of 
lands  to  any  one  who  wished  to  live  by  tilling  the  land ; 
but  not  a  foot  of  the  land  was  remitted  to  private  hands 
for  the  purposes  of  selfish  pleasure  or  the  exclusion  of 
any  other  from  the  landscape.  As  all  business  had  been 
gathered  into  the  grasp  of  the  x\ccumulation,  and  the 
manufacture  of  everything  they  used  and  the  production 
of  everything  that  they  ate  was  in  the  control  of  the 
Accumulation,  its  transfer  to  the  government  was  the 
work  of  a  single  clause  in  the  statute. 

"  The  Accumulation,  which  had  treated  the  first 
menaces  of  resistance  with  contempt,  awoke  to  its 
peril  too  late.  When  it  turned  to  wrest  the  suffrage 
from  the  proletariate,  at  the  first  election  where  it  at- 
tempted to  make  head  against  them,  it  was  simply 
snowed  under,  as  your  picturesque  phrase  is.  The 
Accumulation  had  no  voters,  except  the  few  men  at 
its  head  and  the  creatures  devoted  to  it  by  interest 
and  ignorance.  It  seemed,  at  one  moment,  as  if  it 
would  offer  an  armed  resistance  to  the  popular  will, 
but,  happily,  that  moment  of  madness  passed.  Our 
Evolution  was  accomplished  without  a  drop  of  blood- 
shed, and  the  first  great  political  brotherhood,  the  com- 
monwealth of  Altruria,  was  founded. 

"  I  wish  that  I  had  time  to  go  into  a  study  of  some 
of  the  curious  phases  of  the  transformation  from  a 

185 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

civility  in  which  the  people  lived  upon  each  other  to 
one  in  which  they  lived  for  each  other.  There  is  a 
famous  passage  in  the  inaugural  message  of  our  first 
Altrurian  president  which  compares  the  new  civic  con- 
sciousness with  that  of  a  disembodied  spirit  released  to 
the  life  beyond  this  and  freed  from  all  the  selfish  cares 
and  greeds  of  the  flesh.  But  perhaps  I  shall  give  a 
sufficiently  clear  notion  of  the  triumph  of  the  change 
among  us  when  I  say  that  within  half  a  decade  after 
the  fall  of  the  old  plutocratic  oligarchy  one  of  the  chief 
directors  of  the  Accumulation  publicly  expressed  his 
gratitude  to  God  that  the  Accumulation  had  passed 
away  forever.  You  will  realize  the  importance  of 
such  an  expression  in  recalling  the  declarations  some 
of  your  slave-holders  have  made  since  the  Civil  War, 
that  they  would  not  have  slavery  restored  for  any  earth- 
ly consideration. 

"  But  now,  after  this  preamble,  which  has  been  so 
much  longer  than  I  meant  it  to  be,  how  shall  I  give 
you  a  sufficiently  just  conception  of  the  existing  Altru- 
ria,  the  actual  state  from  which  I  come?" 

"  Yes,"  came  the  ■  nasal  of  the  old  farmer  again, 
"  that's  what  we  are  here  fur.  I  wouldn't  give  a  cop- 
per to  know  all  you  went  through  beforehand.  It's 
too  dumn  like  what  we  have  been  through  ourselves,  as 
fur  as  heard  from." 

A  shout  of  laughter  went  up  from  most  of  the  crowd, 
but  the  Altrurian  did  not  seem  to  see  any  fun  in  it. 

"  Well,"  he  resumed,  "  I  will  tell  you,  as  well  as  I 
can,  what  Altruria  is  like ;  but,  in  the  first  place,  you 
will  have  to  cast  out  of  your  minds  all  images  of  civil- 
ization with  which  your  experience  has  filled  them. 
For  a  time  the  shell  of  the  old  Accumulation  remained 
for  our  social  habitation,  and  we  dwelt  in  the  old  com- 
petitive and  monopolistic  forms  after  the  life  had  gone 

186 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

out  of  them — that  is,  we  continued  to  live  in  populous 
cities,  and  we  toiled  to  heap  up  riches  for  the  moth  to 
corrupt,  and  we  slaved  on  in  making  utterly  useless 
things,  merely  because  we  had  the  habit  of  making  them 
to  sell.  For  a  while  we  made  the  old  sham  things, 
which  pretended  to  be  useful  things  and  were  worse 
than  the  confessedly  useless  things.  I  will  give  you  an 
illustration  from  the  trades,  which  you  will  all  under- 
stand. The  proletariate,  in  the  competitive  and  monopo- 
listic time,  used  to  make  a  kind  of  shoes  for  the  pro- 
letariate, or  the  women  of  the  proletariate,  which  looked 
like  fine  shoes  of  the  best  quality.  It  took  just  as  much 
work  to  make  these  shoes  as  to  make  the  best  fine  shoes ; 
but  they  were  shams  through  and  through.  They  wore 
out  in  a  week,  and  the  people  called  them,  because  they 
were  bought  fresh  for  every  Sunday — " 

"  Sat'd'y-night  shoes,"  screamed  the  old  farmer.  "  I 
know  'em.  My  gals  buy  'em.  Half-dolla'  a  pai',  and 
not  wo'th  the  money." 

"  Well,"  said  the  Altrurian,  "  they  were  a  cheat  and 
a  lie  in  every  way,  and  under  the  new  system  it  was  not 
possible,  when  public  attention  was  called  to  the  fact, 
to  continue  the  falsehood  they  embodied.  As  soon  as 
the  Saturday-night  shoes  realized  itself  to  the  public 
conscience,  an  investigation  began,  and  it  was  found 
that  the  principle  of  the  Saturday-night  shoe  underlay 
half  our  industries  and  made  half  the  work  that  was 
done. 

Then  an  immense  reform  took  place.  We  renounced, 
in  the  most  solemn  convocation  of  the  whole  economy, 
the  principle  of  the  Saturday-night  shoe,  and  those  who 
had  spent  their  lives  in  producing  sham  shoes — " 

"  Yes,"  said  the  professor,  rising  from  his  seat  near 
us  and  addressing  the  speaker,  "  I  shall  be  very  glad 

to  know  what  became  of  the  worthy  and  industrious 

187 


A  TKAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

operatives  who  were  thrown  out  of  employment  by  this 
explosion  of  economic  virtue." 

"  Why,"  the  Altrurian  replied,  "  they  were  set  to 
work  making  honest  shoes ;  and,  as  it  took  no  more  time 
to  make  a  pair  of  honest  shoes  which  lasted  a  year  than 
it  took  to  make  a  pair  of  dishonest  shoes  that  lasted  a 
week,  the  amount  of  labor  in  shoemaking  was  at  once 
enormously  reduced." 

"  Yes,"  said  the  professor,  "  I  understand  that. 
What  became  of  the  shoemakers  ?" 

"  They  joined  the  vast  army  of  other  laborers  who 
had  been  employed,  directly  or  indirectly,  in  the  fab- 
rication of  fraudulent  wares.  These  shoemakers — 
lasters,  button-holers,  binders,  and  so  on — no  longer 
wore  themselves  out  over  their  machines.  One  hour- 
sufficed  where  twelve  hours  were  needed  before,  and 
the  operatives  were  released  to  the  happy  labor  of  the 
fields,  where  no  one  with  us  toils  killingly,  from  dawn 
till  dusk,  but  does  only  as  much  work  as  is  needed  to 
keep  the  body  in  health.  We  had  a  continent  to  re- 
fine and  beautify;  we  had  climates  to  change  and  sea- 
sons to  modify,  a  whole  system  of  meteorology  to  re- 
adjust, and  the  public  works  gave  employment  to  the 
multitudes  emancipated  from  the  soul-destroying  ser- 
vice of  shams.  I  can  scarcely  give  you  a  notion  of 
the  vastness  of  the  improvements  undertaken  and  car- 
ried through,  or  still  in  process  of  accomplishment. 
But  a  single  one  will,  perhaps,  afford  a  sufficient  illus- 
tration. Our  southeast  coast,  from  its  vicinity  to  the 
pole,  had  always  suffered  from  a  winter  of  antarctic 
rigor;  but  our  first  president  conceived  the  plan  of 
cutting  off  a  peninsula,  which  kept  the  equatorial  cur- 
rent from  making  in  to  our  shores ;  and  the  work  was 
begun  in  his  term,  though  the  entire  strip,  twenty 
miles  in  width   and  ninety-three  in  length,   was  not 

188 


A  TEAVELEE  FEOM  ALTEUEIA 

severed  before  the  end  of  the  first  Altrurian  decade. 
Since  that  time  the  whole  region  of  our  southeastern 
coast  has  enjoyed  the  climate  of  your  Mediterranean 
countries. 

"  It  was  not  only  the  makers  of  fraudulent  things 
who  were  released  to  these  useful  and  wholesome  labors, 
but  those  who  had  spent  themselves  in  contriving  ugly 
and  stupid  and  foolish  things  were  set  free  to  the  public 
employment.  The  multitude  of  these  monstrosities  and 
iniquities  was  as  great  as  that  of  the  shams — " 

Here  I  lost  some  words,  for  the  professor  leaned 
over  and  whispered  to  me :  "  He  has  got  that  out  of 
William  Morris.  Depend  upon  it,  the  man  is  a  hum- 
bug.   He  is  not  an  Altrurian  at  all." 

I  confess  that  my  heart  misgave  me ;  but  I  signalled 
the  professor  to  be  silent,  and  again  gave  the  Altrurian 
— if  he  was  an  Altrurian — my  whole  attention. 
13 


XII 


"  And  so,"  the  Altrurian  continued,  "  when  the  labor 
of  the  community  was  emancipated  from  the  bondage 
of  the  false  to  the  free  service  of  the  true,  it  was  also, 
by  an  inevitable  implication,  dedicated  to  beauty  and 
rescued  from  the  old  slavery  to  the  ugly,  the  stupid,  and 
the  trivial.  The  thing  that  was  honest  and  useful  be- 
came, by  the  operation  of  a  natural  law,  a  beautiful 
thing. 

Once  we  had  not  time  enough  to  make  things  beau- 
tiful, we  were  so  overworked  in  making  false  and 
hideous  things  to  sell;  but  now  we  had  all  the  time 
there  was,  and  a  glad  emulation  arose  among  the  trades 
and  occupations  to  the  end  that  everything  done  should 
be  done  finely  as  well  as  done  honestly.  The  artist,  the 
man  of  genius,  who  worked  from  the  love  of  his  work, 
became  the  normal  man,  and  in  the  measure  of  his 
ability  and  of  his  calling  each  wrought  in  the  spirit  of 
the  artist.  We  got  back  the  pleasure  of  doing  a  thing 
beautifully,  which  was  God's  primal  blessing  upon  all 
His  working  children,  but  which  we  had  lost  in  the 
horrible  days  of  our  need  and  greed.  There  is  not  a 
working-man  within  the  sound  of  my  voice  but  has 
known  this  divine  delight,  and  would  gladly  know  it  al- 
ways if  he  only  had  the  time.  Well,  now  we  had  the 
time,  the  Evolution  had  given  us  the  time,  and  in  all 
Altruria  there  was  not  a  furrow  driven  or  a  swath 
mown,  not  a  hammer  struck  on  house  or  on  ship,  not  a 
stitch  sewn  or  a  stone  laid,  not  a  line  written  or  a  sheet 

190 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

printed,  not  a  temple  raised  or  an  engine  built,  but  it 
was  done  with  an  eye  to  beauty  as  well  as  to  use. 

"  As  soon  as  we  were  freed  from  the  necessity  of 
preying  upon  one  another,  we  found  that  there  was  no 
hurry.  The  good  work  would  wait  to  be  well  done ;  and 
one  of  the  earliest  effects  of  the  Evolution  was  the  disuse 
of  the  swift  trains  which  had  traversed  the  continent, 
night  and  day,  that  one  man  might  overreach  another, 
or  make  haste  to  undersell  his  rival,  or  seize  some  ad- 
vantage of  him,  or  plot  some  profit  to  his  loss.  ISTine- 
tenths  of  the  railroads,  which  in  the  old  times  had 
ruinously  competed,  and  then,  in  the  hands  of  the  Ac- 
cumulation, had  been  united  to  impoverish  and  op- 
press the  people,  fell  into  disuse.  The  commonwealth 
operated  the  few  lines  that  were  necessary  for  the  col- 
lection of  materials  and  the  distribution  of  manufact- 
ures, and  for  pleasure  travel  and  the  affairs  of  state ; 
but  the  roads  that  had  been  built  to  invest  capital,  or 
parallel  other  roads,  or  '  make  work,'  as  it  was  called, 
or  to  develop  resources,  or  boom  localities,  were 
suffered  to  fall  into  ruin;  the  rails  were  stripped 
from  the  landscape,  which  they  had  bound  as  with 
shackles,  and  the  road-beds  became  highways  for  the 
use  of  kindly  neighborhoods,  or  nature  recovered  them 
wholly  and  hid  the  memory  of  their  former  abuse  in 
grass  and  flowers  and  wild  vines.  The  ugly  towns  that 
they  had  forced  into  being,  as  Frankenstein  wras  fash- 
ioned, from  the  materials  of  the  charnel,  and  that  had 
no  life  in  or  from  the  good  of  the  community,  soon 
tumbled  into  decay.  The  administration  used  parts  of 
them  in  the  construction  of  the  villages  in  which  the 
Altrurians  now  mostly  live ;  but  generally  these  towns 
were  built  of  materials  so  fraudulent,  in  form  so  vile, 
that  it  was  judged  best  to  burn  them.  In  this  way 
their  sites  were  at  once  purified  and  obliterated. 

191 


A  TKAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  We  had,  of  course,  a  great  many  large  cities  under 
the  old  egoistic  conditions,  which  increased  and  fattened 
upon  the  country,  and  fed  their  cancerous  life  with 
fresh  infusions  of  its  blood.  We  had  several  cities  of 
half  a  million,  and  one  of  more  than  a  million ;  we  had 
a  score  of  them  with  a  population  of  a  hundred  thou- 
sand or  more.  We  were  very  proud  of  them,  and 
vaunted  them  as  a  proof  of  our  unparalleled  pros- 
perity, though  really  they  never  were  anything  but  con- 
geries of  millionaires  and  the  wretched  creatures  who 
served  them  and  supplied  them.  Of  course,  there  was 
everywhere  the  appearance  of  enterprise  and  activity, 
but  it  meant  final  loss  for  the  great  mass  of  the  business 
men,  large  and  small,  and  final  gain  for  the  mill- 
ionaries.  These  and  their  parasites  dwelt  together,  the 
rich  starving  the  poor  and  the  poor  plundering  and  mis- 
governing the  rich ;  and  it  was  the  intolerable  suffering 
in  the  cities  that  chiefly  hastened  the  fall  of  the  old 
Accumulation  and  the  rise  of  the  commonwealth. 

"  Almost  from  the  moment  of  the  Evolution  the  com- 
petitive and  monopolistic  centres  of  population  began  to 
decline.  In  the  clear  light  of  the  new  order  it  was  seen 
that  they  were  not  fit  dwelling-places  for  men,  either 
in  the  complicated  and  luxurious  palaces  where  the 
rich  fenced  themselves  from  their  kind,  or  in  the  vast 
tenements,  towering  height  upon  height,  ten  and  twelve 
stories  up,  where  the  swarming  poor  festered  in  vice 
and  sickness  and  famine.  If  I  were  to  tell  you  of  the 
fashion  of  those  cities  of  our  egoistic  epoch,  how  the 
construction  was  one  error  from  the  first,  and  every 
correction  of  an  error  bred  a  new  defect,  I  should  make 
you  laugh,  I  should  make  you  weep.  We  let  them  fall 
to  ruin  as  quickly  as  they  would,  and  their  sites  are 
still  so  pestilential,  after  the  lapse  of  centuries,  that 
travelers  are  publicly  guarded  against  them.     Raven- 

192 


A  TRAVELER  FKOM  ALTRURIA 

ing  beasts  and  poisonous  reptiles  lurk  in  those  abodes 
of  the  riches  and  the  poverty  that  are  no  longer  known 
to  our  life.  A  part  of  one  of  the  less  malarial  of  the 
old  cities,  however,  is  maintained  by  the  commonwealth 
in  the  form  of  its  prosperity,  and  is  studied  by  anti- 
quarians for  the  instruction,  and  by  moralists  for  the 
admonition,  it  affords.  A  section  of  a  street  is  exposed, 
and  you  see  the  foundations  of  the  houses ;  you  see  the 
filthy  drains  that  belched  into  the  common  sewers,  trap- 
ped and  retrapped  to  keep  the  poison  gases  down;  you 
see  the  sewers  that  rolled  their  loathsome  tides  under 
the  streets,  amid  a  tangle  of  gas-pipes,  steam-pipes,  wa- 
ter-pipes, telegraph-wires,  electric  lighting-wires,  elec- 
tric motor-wires,  and  grip-cables — all  without  a  plan, 
but  makeshifts,  expedients,  devices,  to  repair  and  evade 
the  fundamental  mistake  of  having  any  such  cities  at 
all. 

"  There  are  now  no  cities  in  Altruria,  in  your  mean- 
ing, but  there  are  capitals,  one  for  each  of  the  regions 
of  our  country  and  one  for  the  whole  commonwealth. 
These  capitals  are  for  the  transaction  of  public  affairs, 
in  which  every  citizen  of  Altruria  is  schooled,  and  they 
are  the  residences  of  the  administrative  officials,  who 
are  alternated  every  year,  from  the  highest  to  the  low- 
est. A  public  employment  with  us  is  of  no  greater 
honor  or  profit  than  any  other,  for  with  our  absolute 
economic  equality  there  can  be  no  ambition,  and  there 
is  no  opportunity  for  one  citizen  to  outshine  another. 
But  as  the  capitals  are  the  centres  of  all  the  arts,  which 
we  consider  the  chief  of  our  public  affairs,  they  are 
oftenest  frequented  by  poets,  actors,  painters,  sculptors, 
musicians,  and  architects.  We  regard  all  artists,  who 
are  in  a  sort  creators,  as  the  human  type  which  is  likest 
the  divine,  and  we  try  to  conform  our  whole  industrial 
life  to  the  artistic  temperament.     Even  in  the  labors  of 

193 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

the  field  and  shop,  which  are  obligatory  upon  all,  we 
study  the  inspiration  of  this  temperament,  and  in  the 
voluntary  pursuits  we  allow  it  full  control.  Each,  in 
these,  follows  his  fancy  as  to  what  he  shall  do,  and 
when  he  shall  do  it,  or  whether  he  shall  do  anything  at 
all.  In  the  capitals  are  the  universities,  theatres,  gal- 
leries, museums,  cathedrals,  laboratories  and  conserva- 
tories, and  the  appliances  of  every  art  and  science,  as 
well  as  the  administration  buildings ;  and  beauty  as 
well  as  use  is  studied  in  every  edifice.  Our  capitals  are 
as  clean  and  quiet  and  healthful  as  the  country,  and 
these  advantages  are  secured  simply  by  the  elimination 
of  the  horse,  an  animal  which  we  should  be  as  much 
surprised  to  find  in  the  streets  of  a  town  as  the  plesio- 
saurus  or  the  pterodactyl.  All  transportation  in  the 
capitals,  whether  for  pleasure  or  business,  is  by  elec- 
tricity, and  swift  electrical  expresses  connect  the  capital 
of  each  region  with  the  villages  which  radiate  from  it 
to  the  cardinal  points.  These  expresses  run  at  the  rate 
of  a  hundred  and  fifty  miles  an  hour,  and  they  enable 
the  artist,  the  scientist,  the  literary  man,  of  the  remotest 
hamlet,  to  visit  the  capital  (when  he  is  not  actually 
resident  there  in  some  public  use)  every  day,  after  the 
hours  of  the  obligatory  industries;  or,  if  he  likes,  he 
may  remain  there  a  whole  week  or  fortnight,  giving 
six  hours  a  day  instead  of  three  to  the  obligatories,  until 
the  time  is  made  up.  In  case  of  very  evident  merit, 
or  for  the  purpose  of  allowing  him  to  complete  some 
work  requiring  continuous  application,  a  vote  of  the 
local  agents  may  release  him  from  the  obligatories  in- 
definitely. Generally,  however,  our  artists  prefer  not 
to  ask  this,  but  avail  themselves  of  the  stated  means 
we  have  of  allowing  them  to  work  at  the  obligatories, 
and  get  the  needed  exercise  and  variety  of  occupation 
in  the  immediate  vicinity  of  the  capital. 

194 


A  TKAVELEE  FROM  ALTEURIA 

"  We  do  not  think  it  well  to  connect  the  hamlets  on 
the  different  lines  of  radiation  from  the  capital,  except 
by  the  good  country  roads  which  traverse  each  region  in 
every  direction.  The  villages  are  mainly  inhabited  by 
those  who  prefer  a  rural  life ;  they  are  farming  villages ; 
but  in  Altruria  it  can  hardly  be  said  that  one  man  is 
more  a  farmer  than  another.  We  do  not  like  to  dis- 
tinguish men  by  their  callings ;  we  do  not  speak  of  the 
poet  This  or  the  shoemaker  That,  for  the  poet  may  very 
likely  be  a  shoemaker  in  the  obligatories,  and  the  shoe- 
maker a  poet  in  the  voluntaries.  If  it  can  be  said  that 
one  occupation  is  honored  above  another  with  us,  it  is 
that  which  we  all  share,  and  that  is  the  cultivation  of 
the  earth.  We  believe  that  this,  when  not  followed 
slavishly,  or  for  gain,  brings  man  into  the  closest  re- 
lations to  the  Deity,  through  a  grateful  sense  of  the 
divine  bounty,  and  that  it  not  only  awakens  a  natural 
piety  in  him,  but  that  it  endears  to  the  worker  that 
piece  of  soil  which  he  tills,  and  so  strengthens  his  love 
of  home.  The  home  is  the  very  heart  of  the  Altrurian 
system,  and  we  do  not  think  it  well  that  people  should 
be  away  from  their  homes  very  long  or  very  often.  In 
the  competitive  and  monopolistic  times  men  spent  half 
their  days  in  racing  back  and  forth  across  our  continent ; 
families  were  scattered  by  the  chase  for  fortune,  and 
there  was  a  perpetual  paying  and  repaying  of  visits. 
One-half  the  income  of  those  railroads  which  we  let 
fall  into  disuse  came  from  the  ceaseless  unrest.  Now 
a  man  is  born  and  lives  and  dies  among  his  own  kin- 
dred, and  the  sweet  sense  of  neighborhood,  of  brother- 
hood, which  blessed  the  golden  age  of  the  first  Christian 
republic  is  ours  again.  Every  year  the  people  of  each 
region  meet  one  another  on  Evolution  day,  in  the  re- 
gionic  capital;  once  in  four  years  they  all  visit  the 

national  capital.     There  is  no  danger  of  the  decay  of 

195 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

patriotism  among  us;  our  country  is  our  mother,  and 
we  love  her  as  it  is  impossible  to  love  the  step-mother 
that  a  competitive  or  monopolistic  nation  must  be  to 
its  citizens. 

"  I  can  only  touch  upon  this  feature  and  that  of  our 
system  as  I  chance  to  think  of  it.  If  any  of  you  are 
curious  about  others,  I  shall  be  glad  to  answer  ques- 
tions as  well  as  I  can.  We  have,  of  course,"  the  Altru- 
rian  proceeded,  after  a  little  indefinite  pause,  to  let  any 
speak  who  liked,  "no  money  in  your  sense.  As  the 
whole  people  control  affairs,  no  man  works  for  another, 
and  no  man  pays  another.  Every  one  does  his  share 
of  labor,  and  receives  his  share  of  food,  clothing,  and 
shelter,  which  is  neither  more  nor  less  than  another's. 
If  you  can  imagine  the  justice  and  impartiality  of  a 
well-ordered  family,  you  can  conceive  of  the  social  and 
economic  life  of  Altruria.  We  are,  properly  speaking, 
a  family  rather  than  a  nation  like  yours. 

"  Of  course,  we  are  somewhat  favored  by  our  insular, 
or  continental,  position ;  but  I  do  not  know  that  we  are 
more  so  than  you  are.  Certainly,  however,  we  are  self- 
sufficing  in  a  degree  unknown  to  most  European  coun- 
tries; and  we  have  within  our  borders  the  materials  of 
every  comfort  and  the  resources  of  every  need.  We 
have  no  commerce  with  the  egoistic  world,  as  we  call 
that  outside,  and  I  believe  that  I  am  the  first  Altrurian 
to  visit  foreign  countries  avowedly  in  my  national 
character,  though  we  have  always  had  emissaries  liv- 
ing abroad  incognito.  I  hope  that  I  may  say  without 
offence  that  they  find  it  a  sorrowful  exile,  and  that  the 
reports  of  the  egoistic  world,  with  its  wars,  its  bank- 
ruptcies, its  civic  commotions,  and  its  social  unhap- 
piness,  do  not  make  us  discontented  with  our  own  con- 
dition.    Before  the  Evolution  we  had  completed  the 

round  of  your  inventions  and  discoveries,  impelled  by 

196 


A  TRAVELER  FKOM  ALTRURIA 

the  force  that  drives  you  on ;  and  we  have  since  disused 
most  of  them  as  idle  and  unfit.  But  we  profit,  now  and 
then,  by  the  advances  you  make  in  science,  for  we  are 
passionately  devoted  to  the  study  of  the  natural  laws, 
open  or  occult,  under  which  all  men  have  their  being. 
Occasionally  an  emissary  returns  with  a  sum  of  money, 
and  explains  to  the  students  of  the  national  university 
the  processes  by  which  it  is  lost  and  won;  and  at  a 
certain  time  there  was  a  movement  for  its  introduction 
among  us,  not  for  its  use  as  you  know  it,  but  for  a 
species  of  counters  in  games  of  chance.  It  was  consid- 
ered, however,  to  contain  an  element  of  danger,  and 
the  scheme  was  discouraged. 

"  Nothing  amuses  and  puzzles  our  people  more  than 
the  accounts  our  emissaries  give  of  the  changes  of 
fashion  in  the  outside  world,  and  of  the  ruin  of  soul 
and  body  which  the  love  of  dress  often  works.  Our 
own  dress,  for  men  and  for  women,  is  studied,  in  one 
ideal  of  use  and  beauty,  from  the  antique ;  caprice  and 
vagary  in  it  would  be  thought  an  effect  of  vulgar  vanity. 
Nothing  is  worn  that  is  not  simple  and  honest  in  text- 
ure ;  we  do  not  know  whether  a  thing  is  cheap  or  dear, 
except  as  it  is  easy  or  hard  to  come  by,  and  that  which 
is  hard  to  come  by  is  forbidden  as  wasteful  and  fool- 
ish. The  community  builds  the  dwellings  of  the  com- 
munity, and  these,  too,  are  of  a  classic  simplicity, 
though  always  beautiful  and  fit  in  form ;  the  splendors 
of  the  arts  are  lavished  upon  the  public  edifices,  which 
we  all  enjoy  in  common." 

"  Isn't  this  the  greatest  rehash  of  '  Utopia,'  '  New  At- 
lantis,' and  '  City  of  the  Sun  '  that  you  ever  imagined  ?" 
the  professor  whispered  across  me  to  the  banker.  "  The 
man  is  a  fraud,  and  a  very  bungling  fraud  at  that." 

"  Well,  you  must  expose  him,  when  he  gets  through," 
the  banker  whispered  back. 

197 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

But  the  professor  could  not  wait.  He  got  upon  his 
feet  and  called  out :  "  May  I  ask  the  gentleman  from 
Altruria  a  question  ?" 

"  Certainly,"  the  Altrurian  blandly  assented. 

"  Make  it  short!"  Reuben  Camp's  voice  broke  in,  im- 
patiently. "  We  didn't  come  here  to  listen  to  your  ques- 
tions." 

The  professor  contemptuously  ignored  him.  "  I  sup- 
pose you  occasionally  receive  emissaries  from,  as  well 
as  send  them  to,  the  world  outside?" 

"  Yes,  now  and  then  castaways  land  on  our  coasts, 
and  ships  out  of  their  reckonings  put  in  at  our  ports  for 
water  or  provision." 

"  And  how  are  they  pleased  with  your  system  ?" 

"  Why,  I  cannot  better  answer  than  by  saying  that 
they  mostly  refuse  to  leave  us." 

"  Ah,  just  as  Bacon  reports !"  cried  the  professor. 

"You  mean  in  the  New  Atlantis?"  returned  the 
Altrurian.  "  Yes ;  it  is  astonishing  how  well  Bacon  in 
that  book,  and  Sir  Thomas  More  in  his  Utopia,  have 
divined  certain  phases  of  our  civilization  and  polity." 

"  I  think  he  rather  has  you,  professor,"  the  banker 
whispered,  with  a  laugh. 

"  But  all  those  inspired  visionaries,"  the  Altrurian 
continued,  while  the  professor  sat  grimly  silent,  watch- 
ing for  another  chance,  "  who  have  borne  testimony  of 
us  in  their  dreams,  conceived  of  states  perfect  with- 
out the  discipline  of  a  previous  competitive  condition. 
What  I  thought,  however,  might  specially  interest  you 
Americans  in  Altruria  is  the  fact  that  our  economy 
was  evolved  from  one  so  like  that  in  which  you  actu- 
ally have  your  being.  I  had  even  hoped  you  might 
feel  that,  in  all  these  points  of  resemblance,  America 
prophesies  another  Altruria.     I  know  that  to  some  of 

you  all  that  I  have  told  of  my  country  will  seem  a 

198 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

baseless  fabric,  with  no  more  foundation,  in  fact,  than 
More's  fairy-tale  of  another  land  where  men  dealt 
kindly  and  justly  by  one  another,  and  dwelt,  a  whole 
nation,  in  the  unity  and  equality  of  a  family.  But 
why  should  not  a  part  of  that  fable  have  come  true  in 
our  polity,  as  another  part  of  it  has  come  true  in 
yours  ?  When  Sir  Thomas  More  wrote  that  book,  he 
noted  with  abhorrence  the  monstrous  injustice  of  the 
fact  that  men  were  hanged  for  small  thefts  in  Eng- 
land; and  in  the  preliminary  conversation  between  its 
characters  he  denounced  the  killing  of  men  for  any 
sort  of  thefts.  ISTow  you  no  longer  put  men  to  death 
for  theft;  you  look  back  upon  that  cruel  code  of  your 
mother  England  with  an  abhorrence  as  great  as  his 
own.  We,  for  our  part,  who  have  realized  the  Utopian 
dream  of  brotherly  equality,  look  back  with  the  same 
abhorrence  upon  a  state  where  some  were  rich  and  some 
poor,  some  taught  and  some  untaught,  some  high  and 
some  low,  and  the  hardest  toil  often  failed  to  supply 
a  sufficiency  of  the  food  which  luxury  wasted  in  its 
riots.  That  state  seems  as  atrocious  to  us  as  the  state 
which  hanged  a  man  for  stealing  a  loaf  of  bread  seems 
to  you. 

"  But  we  do  not  regret  the  experience  of  competition 
and  monopoly.  They  taught  us  some  things  in  the 
operation  of  the  industries.  The  labor-saving  inven- 
tions which  the  Accumulation  perverted  to  money- 
making  we  have  restored  to  the  use  intended  by  their 
inventors  and  the  Creator  of  their  inventors.  After 
serving  the  advantage  of  socializing  the  industries 
which  the  Accumulation  effected  for  its  own  purposes, 
we  continued  the  work  in  large  mills  and  shops,  in  the 
interest  of  the  workers,  whom  we  wished  to  guard 
against  the  evil  effects  of  solitude.     But  our  mills  and 

shops  are  beautiful  as  well  as  useful.     They  look  like 

199 


A  TRAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

temples,  and  they  are  temples,  dedicated  to  that  sym- 
pathy between  the  divine  and  human  which  expresses 
itself  in  honest  and  exquisite  workmanship.  They  rise 
amid  leafy  boscages  beside  the  streams,  which  form 
their  only  power ;  for  we  have  disused  steam  altogether, 
with  all  the  offences  to  the  eye  and  ear  which  its  use 
brought  into  the  world.  Our  life  is  so  simple  and  our 
needs  are  so  few  that  the  hand-work  of  the  primitive 
toilers  could  easily  supply  our  wants ;  but  machinery 
works  so  much  more  thoroughly  and  beautifully  that 
we  have  in  great  measure  retained  it.  Only,  the  ma- 
chines that  were  once  the  workmen's  enemies  and  mas- 
ters are  now  their  friends  and  servants;  and,  if  any 
man  chooses  to  work  alone  with  his  own  hands,  the 
state  will  buy  what  he  makes  at  the  same  price  that 
it  sells  the  wares  made  collectively.  This  secures  every 
right  of  individuality. 

"  The  farm-work,  as  well  as  the  mill-work  and  the 
shop-work,  is  done  by  companies  of  workers ;  and  there 
is  nothing  of  that  loneliness  in  our  woods  and  fields 
which,  I  understand,  is  the  cause  of  so  much  insanity 
among  you.  It  is  not  good  for  man  to  be  alone,  was 
the  first  thought  of  his  Creator  when  he  considered  him, 
and  we  act  upon  this  truth  in  everything.  The  privacy 
of  the  family  is  sacredly  guarded  in  essentials,  but  the 
social  instinct  is  so  highly  developed  with  us  that  we 
like  to  eat  together  in  large  refectories,  and  we  meet 
constantly  to  argue  and  dispute  on  questions  of  aesthetics 
and  metaphysics.  We  do  not,  perhaps,  read  so  many 
books  as  you  do,  for  most  of  our  reading,  when  not  for 
special  research,  but  for  culture  and  entertainment,  is 
done  by  public  readers,  to  large  groups  of  listeners.  We 
have  no  social  meetings  which  are  not  free  to  all ;  and 
we  encourage  joking  and  the  friendly  give  and  take  of 
witty  encounters." 

200 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

"  A  little  hint  from  Sparta,"  suggested  the  professor. 

The  banker  leaned  over  to  whisper  to  me :  "  From 
what  I  have  seen  of  your  friend  when  offered  a  piece 
of  American  humor,  I  should  fancy  the  Altrurian  arti- 
cle was  altogether  different.  Upon  the  whole,  I  would 
rather  not  be  present  at  one  of  their  witty  encounters, 
if  I  were  obliged  to  stay  it  out." 

The  Altrurian  had  paused  to  drink  a  glass  of  water, 
and  now  he  went  on:  "But  we  try,  in  everything  that 
does  not  inconvenience  or  injure  others,  to  let  every 
one  live  the  life  he  likes  best.  If  a  man  prefers  to 
dwell  apart,  and  have  his  meals  in  private  for  himself 
alone  or  for  his  family,  it  is  freely  permitted;  only 
he  must  not  expect  to  be  served  as  in  public,  where 
service  is  one  of  the  voluntaries ;  private  service  is  not 
permitted;  those  wishing  to  live  alone  must  wait  upon 
themselves,  cook  their  own  food,  and  care  for  their  own 
tables.  Very  few,  however,  wish  to  withdraw  from  the 
public  life,  for  most  of  the  discussions  and  debates  take 
place  at  our  mid-day  meal,  which  falls  at  the  end  of  the 
obligatory  labors,  and  is  prolonged  indefinitely,  or  as 
long  as  people  like  to  chat  and  joke  or  listen  to  the 
reading  of  some  pleasant  book. 

"  In  Altruria  there  is  no  hurry,  for  no  one  wishes  to 

outstrip  another,  or  in  any  wise  surpass  him.     We  are 

all  assured  of  enough,  and  are  forbidden  any  and  every 

sort  of  superfluity.     If  any  one,  after  the  obligatories, 

wishes  to  be  entirely  idle,  he  may  be  so,  but  I  cannot 

now  think  of  a  single  person  without  some  voluntary 

occupation ;  doubtless  there  are  such  persons,  but  I  do 

not  know  them.     It  used  to  be  said,  in  the  old  times, 

that  i  it  was  human  nature  '  to  shirk  and  malinger  and 

loaf,  but  we  have  found  that  it  is  no  such  thing.     We 

have  found  that  it  is  human  nature  to  work  cheerfully, 

willingly,  eagerly,  at  the  tasks  which  all  share  for  the 

201 


A  TRAVELER  FKOM  ALTKUEIA 

supply  of  the  common  necessities.  In  like  manner  we 
have  found  out  that  it  is  not  human  nature  to  hoard  and 
grudge,  but  that  when  the  fear,  and  even  the  imagina- 
tion, of  want  is  taken  away,  it  is  human  nature  to  give 
and  to  help  generously.  We  used  to  say :  '  A  man  will 
lie,  or  a  man  will  cheat,  in  his  own  interest;  that  is 
human  nature  ' ;  but  that  is  no  longer  human  nature 
with  us,  perhaps  because  no  man  has  any  interest  to 
serve ;  he  has  only  the  interests  of  others  to  serve,  while 
others  serve  his.  It  is  in  no  wise  possible  for  the  in- 
dividual to  separate  his  good  from  the  common  good; 
he  is  prosperous  and  happy  only  as  all  the  rest  are  so; 
and  therefore  it  is  not  human  nature  with  us  for  any 
one  to  lie  in  wait  to  betray  another  or  seize  an  advan- 
tage. That  would  be  ungentlemanly,  and  in  Altruria 
every  man  is  a  gentleman  and  every  woman  a  lady.  If 
you  will  excuse  me  here  for  being  so  frank,  I  would 
like  to  say  something  by  way  of  illustration  which  may 
be  offensive  if  you  take  it  personally." 

He  looked  at  our  little  group,  as  if  he  were  address- 
ing himself  more  especially  to  us,  and  the  banker  called 
out,  jollily:  "  Go  on!  I  guess  we  can  stand  it,"  and 
"Go  ahead!"  came  from  all  sides,  from  all  kinds  of 
listeners. 

"  It  is  merely  this :  that  as  we  look  back  at  the  old 
competitive  conditions  we  do  not  see  how  any  man 
could  be  a  gentleman  in  them,  since  a  gentleman  must 
think  first  of  others,  and  these  conditions  compelled 
every  man  to  think  first  of  himself." 

There  was  a  silence  broken  by  some  conscious  and 
hardy  laughter,  while  we  each  swallowed  this  pill  as 
we  could. 

"  What  are  competitive  conditions  ?"  Mrs.  Makely 
demanded  of  me. 

"  Well,  ours  are  competitive  conditions,"  I  said. 

202 


A  TKAVELEK  FKOM  ALTRUEIA 

"  Very  well,  then,"  she  returned,  "  I  don't  think  Mr. 
Homos  is  much  of  a  gentleman  to  say  such  a  thing  to 
an  American  audience.  Or,  wait  a  moment !  Ask  him 
if  the  same  rule  applies  to  women." 

I  rose,  strengthened  by  the  resentment  I  felt,  and 
said :  "  Do  I  understand  that  in  your  former  competi- 
tive conditions  it  was  also  impossible  for  a  woman  to 
be  a  lady  V 

The  professor  gave  me  an  applausive  nod  as  I  sat 
down.  "  I  envy  you  the  chance  of  that  little  dig,"  he 
whispered. 

The  Altrurian  was  thoughtful  a  moment,  and  then 
he  answered :  "  ]STo,  I  should  not  say  it  was.  From 
what  we  know  historically  of  those  conditions  in  our 
country,  it  appears  that  the  great  mass  of  women  were 
not  directly  affected  by  them.  They  constituted  an 
altruistic  dominion  of  the  egoistic  empire,  and,  except 
as  they  were  tainted  by  social  or  worldly  ambitions, 
it  was  possible  for  every  woman  to  be  a  lady,  even  in 
competitive  conditions.  Her  instincts  were  unselfish, 
and  her  first  thoughts  were  nearly  always  of  others." 

Mrs.  Makely  jumped  to  her  feet  and  clapped  vio- 
lently with  her  fan  on  the  palm  of  her  left  hand. 
"  Three  cheers  for  Mr.  Homos !"  she  shrieked,  and  all 
the  women  took  up  the  cry,  supported  by  all  the  natives 
and  the  construction  gang.  I  fancied  these  fellows 
gave  their  support  largely  in  a  spirit  of  burlesque ;  but 
they  gave  it  robustly,  and  from  that  time  on,  Mrs. 
Makely  led  the  applause,  and  they  roared  in  after  her. 

It  is  impossible  to  follow  closely  the  course  of  the 
Altrurian's  account  of  his  country,  which  grew  more 
and  more  incredible  as  he  went  on,  and  implied  every 
insulting  criticism  of  ours.  Some  one  asked  him  about 
war  in  Altruria,  and  he  said :  "  The  very  name  of  our 
country  implies  the  absence  of  war.    At  the  time  of  the 

203 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

Evolution  our  country  bore  to  the  rest  of  our  continent 
the  same  relative  proportion  that  your  country  bears  to 
your  continent.  The  egoistic  nations  to  the  north  and 
the  south  of  us  entered  into  an  offensive  and  defensive 
alliance  to  put  down  the  new  altruistic  commonwealth, 
and  declared  war  against  us.  Their  forces  were  met 
at  the  frontier  by  our  entire  population  in  arms,  and 
full  of  the  martial  spirit  bred  of  the  constant  hostilities 
of  the  competitive  and  monopolistic  epoch  just  ended. 
Negotiations  began  in  the  face  of  the  imposing  demon- 
stration we  made,  and  we  were  never  afterward  molest- 
ed by  our  neighbors,  who  finally  yielded  to  the  specta- 
cle of  our  civilization  and  united  their  political  and  so- 
cial fate  with  ours.  At  present,  our  whole  continent  is 
Altrurian.  For  a  long  time  we  kept  up  a  system  of 
coast  defences,  but  it  is  also  a  long  time  since  we  aban- 
doned these ;  for  it  is  a  maxim  with  us  that  where  every 
citizen's  life  is  a  pledge  of  the  public  safety,  that  coun- 
try can  never  be  in  danger  of  foreign  enemies. 

"  In  this,  as  in  all  other  things,  we  believe  ourselves 
the  true  followers  of  Christ,  whose  doctrine  we  seek  to 
make  our  life  as  He  made  it  His.  We  have  several 
forms  of  ritual,  but  no  form  of  creed,  and  our  religious 
differences  may  be  said  to  be  aesthetic  and  tempera- 
mental rather  than  theological  and  essential.  We  have 
no  denominations,  for  we  fear  in  this,  as  in  other  mat- 
ters, to  give  names  to  things  lest  we  should  cling  to  the 
names  instead  of  the  things.  We  love  the  realities,  and 
for  this  reason  we  look  at  the  life  of  a  man  rather  than 
his  profession  for  proof  that  he  is  a  religious  man. 

"  I  have  been  several  times  asked,  during  my  so- 
journ among  you,  what  are  the  sources  of  compassion, 
of  sympathy,  of  humanity,  of  charity  with  us,  if  we 
have  not  only  no  want,  or  fear  of  want,  but  not  even 
any  economic  inequality.    I  suppose  this  is  because  you 

204 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

are  so  constantly  struck  by  the  misery  arising  from 
economic  inequality  and  want,  or  the  fear  of  want, 
among  yourselves,  that  you  instinctively  look  in  that 
direction.  But  have  you  ever  seen  sweeter  compassion, 
tenderer  sympathy,  warmer  humanity,  heavenlier  char- 
ity than  that  shown  in  the  family  where  all  are  eco- 
nomically equal  and  no  one  can  want  while  any  other 
has  to  give?  Altruria,  I  say  again,  is  a  family,  and, 
as  we  are  mortal,  we  are  still  subject  to  those  nobler 
sorrows  which  God  has  appointed  to  men,  and  which 
are  so  different  from  the  squalid  accidents  that  they 
have  made  for  themselves.  Sickness  and  death  call  out 
the  most  angelic  ministries  of  love ;  and  those  who 
wish  to  give  themselves  to  others  may  do  so  without 
hinderance  from  those  cares,  and  even  those  duties,  rest- 
ing upon  men  where  each  must  look  out  first  for  him- 
self and  for  his  own.  Oh,  believe  me,  believe  me,  you 
can  know  nothing  of  the  divine  rapture  of  self-sacrifice 
while  you  must  dread  the  sacrifice  of  another  in  it. 
You  are  not  free,  as  we  are,  to  do  everything  for  others, 
for  it  is  your  duty  to  do  rather  for  those  of  your  own 
household ! 

"  There  is  something,"  he  continued,  "  which  I  hard- 
ly know  how  to  speak  of,"  and  here  we  all  began  to 
prick  our  ears.  I  prepared  myself  as  well  as  I  could 
for  another  affront,  though  I  shuddered  when  the  banker 
hardily  called  out :  "  Don't  hesitate  to  say  anything  you 
wish,  Mr.  Homos.  I,  for  one,  should  like  to  hear  you 
express  yourself  fully." 

It  was  always  the  unexpected,  certainly,  that  hap- 
pened from  the  Altrurian.  "  It  is  merely  this,"  he 
said :  "  Having  come  to  live  rightly  upon  earth,  as  we 
believe,  or  having  at  least  ceased  to  deny  God  in  our 
statutes  and  customs,  the  fear  of  death,  as  it  once 
weighed  upon  us,  has  been  lifted  from  our  souls.  Tho 
14  205 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

mystery  of  it  has  so  far  been  taken  away  that  we  per- 
ceive it  as  something  just  and  natural.  Now  that  all 
unkindness  has  been  banished  from  among  us,  we  can 
conceive  of  no  such  cruelty  as  death  once  seemed.  If 
we  do  not  know  yet  the  full  meaning  of  death,  we  know 
that  the  Creator  of  it  and  of  us  meant  mercy  and  bless- 
ing by  it.  When  one  dies  we  grieve,  but  not  as  those 
without  hope.  We  do  not  say  that  the  dead  have  gone 
to  a  better  place,  and  then  selfishly  bewail  them,  for 
we  have  the  kingdom  of  heaven  upon  earth  already,  and 
we  know  that  wherever  they  go  they  will  be  homesick 
for  Altruria ;  and  when  we  think  of  the  years  that  may 
pass  before  we  meet  them  again  our  hearts  ache,  as 
theirs  must.  But  the  presence  of  the  risen  Christ  in 
our  daily  lives  is  our  assurance  that  no  one  ceases  to  be, 
and  that  we  shall  see  our  dead  again.  I  cannot  explain 
this  to  you ;  I  can  only  affirm  it." 

The  Altrurian  spoke  very  solemnly,  and  a  reverent 
hush  fell  upon  the  assembly.  It  was  broken  by  the 
voice  of  a  woman  wailing  out :  "  Oh,  do  you  suppose, 
if  ive  lived  so,  we  should  feel  so,  too  ?  That  I  should 
know  my  little  girl  was  living  ?" 

"  Why  not  ?"  asked  the  Altrurian. 

To  my  vast  astonishment,  the  manufacturer,  who  sat 
the  farthest  from  me  in  the  same  line  with  Mrs.  Makely, 
the  professor,  and  the  banker,  rose  and  asked,  tremu- 
lously :  "  And  have — have  you  had  any  direct  communi- 
cation with  the  other  world  ?  Has  any  disembodied 
spirit  returned  to  testify  of  the  life  beyond  the 
grave  ?" 

The  professor  nodded  significantly  across  Mrs.  Make- 
ly to  me,  and  then  frowned  and  shook  his  head.  I 
asked  her  if  she  knew  what  he  meant.  "  Why,  didn't 
you  know  that  spiritualism  was  that  poor  man's  foible  ? 

He  lost  his  son  in  a  railroad  accident,  and  ever  since — " 

206 


A  TKAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

She  stopped  and  gave  her  attention  to  the  Altrurian, 
who  was  replying  to  the  manufacturer's  question. 

"  We  do  not  need  any  such  testimony.  Our  life  here 
makes  us  sure  of  the  life  there.  At  any  rate,  no  ex- 
ternation  of  the  supernatural,  no  objective  miracle,  has 
been  wrought  in  our  behalf.  We  have  had  faith  to  do 
what  we  prayed  for,  and  the  prescience  of  which  I 
speak  has  been  added  unto  us." 

The  manufacturer  asked,  as  the  bereaved  mother  had 
asked :  "  And  if  I  lived  so,  should  I  feel  so  %" 

Again  the  Altrurian  answered :  "  Why  not  V 

The  poor  woman  quavered :  "  Oh,  I  do  believe  it !  I 
just  know  it  must  be  true  !" 

The  manufacturer  shook  his  head  sorrowfully  and 
sat  down,  and  remained  there,  looking  at  the  ground. 

"  I  am  aware,"  the  Altrurian  went  on,  "  that  what 
I  have  said  as  to  our  realizing  the  kingdom  of  heaven 
on  the  earth  must  seem  boastful  and  arrogant.  That 
is  what  you  pray  for  every  day,  but  you  do  not  believe 
it  possible  for  God's  will  to  be  done  on  earth  as  it  is 
done  in  heaven — that  is,  you  do  not  if  you  are  like  the 
competitive  and  monopolistic  people  we  once  were.  We 
once  regarded  that  petition  as  a  formula  vaguely  pleas- 
ing to  the  Deity,  but  we  no  more  expected  His  kingdom 
to  come  than  we  expected  Him  to  give  us  each  day  our 
daily  bread;  we  knew  that  if  we  wanted  something  to 
eat  we  should  have  to  hustle  for  it,  and  get  there  first ; 
I  use  the  slang  of  that  far-off  time,  which,  I  confess, 
had  a  vulgar  vigor. 

"  But  now  everything  is  changed,  and  the  change 
has  taken  place  chiefly  from  one  cause — namely,  the 
disuse  of  money.  At  first,  it  was  thought  that  some  sort 
of  circulating  medium  must  be  used,  that  life  could  not 
be  transacted  without  it.  But  life  began  to  go  on  per- 
fectly well,   when  each   dwelt  in  the  place   assigned 

207 


A  TKAVELEE  FROM  ALTEURIA 

him,  which  was  no  better  and  no  worse  than  any  other ; 
and  when,  after  he  had  given  his  three  hours  a  day  to 
the  obligatory  labors,  he  had  a  right  to  his  share  of 
food,  light,  heat,  and  raiment;  the  voluntary  labors,  to 
which  he  gave  much  time  or  little,  brought  him  no  in- 
crease of  those  necessaries,  but  only  credit  and  affection. 
We  had  always  heard  it  said  that  the  love  of  money  was 
the  root  of  all  evil,  but  we  had  taken  this  for  a  saying, 
merely;  now  we  realized  it  as  an  active,  vital  truth. 
As  soon  as  money  was  abolished  the  power  to  purchase 
was  gone,  and  even  if  there  had  been  any  means  of  buy- 
ing beyond  the  daily  needs,  with  overwork,  the  commu- 
nity had  no  power  to  sell  to  the  individual.  No  man 
owned  anything,  but  every  man  had  the  right  to  any- 
thing that  he  could  use;  when  he  could  not  use  it,  his 
right  lapsed. 

"  With  the  expropriation  of  the  individual  the  whole 
vast  catalogue  of  crimes  against  property  shrank  to  noth- 
ing. The  thief  could  only  steal  from  the  community; 
but  if  he  stole,  what  was  he  to  do  with  his  booty?  It 
was  still  possible  for  a  depredator  to  destroy,  but  few 
men's  hate  is  so  comprehensive  as  to  include  all  other 
men,  and  when  the  individual  could  no  longer  hurt 
some  other  individual  in  his  property  destruction 
ceased. 

"  All  the  many  murders  done  from  love  of  money,  or 
of  what  money  could  buy,  were  at  an  end.  Where  there 
was  no  want,  men  no  longer  bartered  their  souls,  or 
women  their  bodies,  for  the  means  to  keep  themselves 
alive.  The  vices  vanished  with  the  crimes,  and  the 
diseases  almost  as  largely  disappeared.  People  were  no 
longer  sickened  by  sloth  and  surfeit,  or  deformed  and 
depleted  by  overwork  and  famine.  They  were  whole- 
somely housed  in  healthful  places,  and  they  were  clad 
fitly  for  their  labor  and  fitly  for  their  leisure;  the 

208 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

caprices  of  vanity  were  not  suffered  to  attaint  the  beauty 
of  the  national  dress. 

"  With  the  stress  of  superfluous  social  and  business 
duties,  and  the  perpetual  fear  of  want  which  all  classes 
felt,  more  or  less;  with  the  tumult  of  the  cities  and  the 
solitude  of  the  country,  insanity  had  increased  among 
us  till  the  whole  land  was  dotted  with  asylums  and  the 
mad  were  numbered  by  hundreds  of  thousands.  In 
every  region  they  were  an  army,  an  awful  army  of 
anguish  and  despair.  ]STow  they  have  decreased  to  a 
number  so  small,  and  are  of  a  type  so  mild,  that  we  can 
hardly  count  insanity  among  our  causes  of  unhappiness. 

"  We  have  totally  eliminated  chance  from  our  eco- 
nomic life.  There  is  still  a  chance  that  a  man  will  be 
tall  or  short  in  Altruria,  that  he  will  be  strong  or  weak, 
well  or  ill,  gay  or  grave,  happy  or  unhappy  in  love, 
but  none  that  he  will  be  rich  or  poor,  busy  or  idle,  live 
splendidly  or  meanly.  These  stupid  and  vulgar  acci- 
dents of  human  contrivance  cannot  befall  us ;  but  I  shall 
not  be  able  to  tell  you  just  how  or  why,  or  to  detail 
the  process  of  eliminating  chance.  I  may  say,  however, 
that  it  began  with  the  nationalization  of  telegraphs,  ex- 
presses, railroads,  mines,  and  all  large  industries  oper- 
ated by  stock  companies.  This  at  once  struck  a  fatal 
blow  at  the  speculation  in  values,  real  and  unreal,  and 
at  the  stock-exchange,  or  bourse ;  we  had  our  own  name 
for  that  gambler's  paradise,  or  gambler's  hell,  whose 
baleful  influence  penetrated  every  branch  of  business. 

"  There  were  still  business  fluctuations  as  long  as  we 
had  business,  but  they  were  on  a  smaller  and  smaller 
scale,  and  with  the  final  lapse  of  business  they  neces- 
sarily vanished;  all  economic  chance  vanished.  The 
founders  of  the  commonwealth  understood  perfectly 
that  business  was  the  sterile  activity  of  the  function  in- 
terposed between  the  demand  and  the  supply;  that  it 

209 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

was  nothing  structural;  and  they  intended  its  extinc- 
tion, and  expected  it  from  the  moment  that  money  wa3 
abolished." 

"  This  is  all  pretty  tiresome,"  said  the  professor  to 
our  immediate  party.  "  I  don't  see  why  we  oblige  our- 
selves to  listen  to  that  fellow's  stuff.  As  if  a  civilized 
state  could  exist  for  a  day  without  money  or  business." 

He  went  on  to  give  his  opinion  of  the  Altrurian's 
pretended  description,  in  a  tone  so  audible  that  it  at- 
tracted the  notice  of  the  nearest  group  of  railroad  hands, 
who  were  listening  closely  to  Homos,  and  one  of  them 
sang  out  to  the  professor :  "  Can't  you  wait  and  let  the 
first  man  finish  ?"  and  another  yelled :  "  Put  him  out !" 
and  then  they  all  laughed  with  a  humorous  perception 
of  the  impossibility  of  literally  executing  the  sugges- 
tion. 

By  the  time  all  was  quiet  again  I  heard  the  Altru- 
rian  saying :  "  As  to  our  social  life,  I  cannot  describe 
it  in  detail,  but  I  can  give  you  some  notion  of  its  spirit. 
We  make  our  pleasures  civic  and  public  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, and  the  ideal  is  inclusive  and  not  exclusive. 
There  are,  of  course,  festivities  which  all  cannot  share, 
but  our  distribution  into  small  communities  favors  the 
possibility  of  all  doing  so.  Our  daily  life,  however,  is 
so  largely  social  that  we  seldom  meet  by  special  invita- 
tion or  engagement.  When  we  do,  it  is  with  the  per- 
fect understanding  that  the  assemblage  confers  no  social 
distinction,  but  is  for  a  momentary  convenience.  In 
fact,  these  occasions  are  rather  avoided,  recalling,  as 
they  do,  the  vapid  and  tedious  entertainments  of  the 
competitive  epoch,  the  receptions  and  balls  and  dinners 
of  a  semi-barbaric  people  striving  for  social  prominence 
by  shutting  a  certain  number  in  and  a  certain  num- 
ber out,  and  overdressing,  overfeeding,  and  overdrink- 
ing. 

210 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

Anything  premeditated  in  the  way  of  a  pleasure  we 
think  stupid  and  mistaken;  we  like  to  meet  suddenly, 
or  on  the  spur  of  the  moment,  out-of-doors,  if  possible, 
and  arrange  a  picnic  or  a  dance  or  a  play ;  and  let  peo- 
ple come  and  go  without  ceremony.  No  one  is  more 
host  than  guest;  all  are  hosts  and  guests.  People  con- 
sort much  according  to  their  tastes — literary,  musical, 
artistic,  scientific,  or  mechanical — hut  these  tastes  are 
made  approaches,  not  harriers ;  and  we  find  out  that  we 
have  many  more  tastes  in  common  than  was  formerly 
supposed. 

"  But,  after  all,  our  life  is  serious,  and  no  one  among 
us  is  quite  happy,  in  the  general  esteem,  unless  he  has 
dedicated  himself,  in  some  special  way,  to  the  general 
good.    Our  ideal  is  not  rights,  hut  duties." 

"  Mazzini  1"  whispered  the  professor. 

"  The  greatest  distinction  which  any  one  can  enjoy 
with  us  is  to  have  found  out  some  new  and  signal  way 
of  serving  the  community ;  and  then  it  is  not  good  form 
for  him  to  seek  recognition.  The  doing  any  fine  thing 
is  the  purest  pleasure  it  can  give ;  applause  flatters,  but 
it  hurts,  too,  and  our  benefactors,  as  we  call  them,  have 
learned  to  shun  it. 

"  We  are  still  far  from  thinking  our  civilization  per- 
fect; but  we  are  sure  that  our  civic  ideals  are  perfect. 
What  we  have  already  accomplished  is  to  have  given 
a  whole  continent  perpetual  peace ;  to  have  founded  an 
economy  in  which  there  is  no  possibility  of  want;  to 
have  killed  out  political  and  social  ambition;  to  have 
disused  money  and  eliminated  chance ;  to  have  realized 
the  brotherhood  of  the  race,  and  to  have  outlived  the 
fear  of  death." 

The  Altrurian  suddenly  stopped  with  these  words  and 
sat  down.  He  had  spoken  a  long  time,  and  with  a  ful- 
ness which  my  report  gives  little  notion  of;  but,  though 

211 


A  TRAVELEK  FROM  ALTRURIA 

most  of  his  cultivated  listeners  were  weary,  and  a  good 
many  ladies  had  left  their  seats  and  gone  back  to  the 
hotel,  not  one  of  the  natives,  or  the  work-people  of  any 
sort,  had  stirred ;  now  they  remained  a  moment  motion- 
less and  silent  before  they  rose  from  all  parts  of  the 
field  and  shouted :  "  Go  on !  Don't  stop !  Tell  us  all 
about  it !" 

I  saw  Reuben  Camp  climb  the  shoulders  of  a  big 
fellow  near  where  the  Altrurian  had  stood;  he  waved 
the  crowd  to  silence  with  out-spread  arms.  "  He  isn't 
going  to  say  anything  more;  he's  tired.  But  if  any 
man  don't  think  he's  got  his  dollar's  worth,  let  him 
walk  up  to  the  door  and  the  ticket-agent  will  refund 
him  his  money." 

The  crowd  laughed,  and  some  one  shouted :  "  Good 
for  you,  Reub !" 

Camp  continued :  "  But  our  friend  here  will  shake 
the  hand  of  any  man,  woman,  or  child  that  wants  to 
speak  to  him ;  and  you  needn't  wipe  it  on  the  grass  first, 
either.  He's  a  man  !  And  I  want  to  say  that  he's  going 
to  spend  the  next  week  with  us,  at  my  mother's  house, 
and  we  shall  be  glad  to  have  you  call." 

The  crowd,  the  rustic  and  ruder  part  of  it,  cheered 
and  cheered  till  the  mountain  echoes  answered;  then  a 
railroader  called  for  three  times  three,  with  a  tiger, 
and  got  it.  The  guests  of  the  hotel  broke  away  and 
went  toward  the  house  over  the  long  shadows  of  the 
meadow.  The  lower  classes  pressed  forward,  on  Camp's 
invitation. 

"  Well,  did  you  ever  hear  a  more  disgusting  rigma- 
role?" asked  Mrs.  Makely,  as  our  little  group  halted 
indecisively  about  her. 

"  With  all  those  imaginary  commonwealths  to  draw 
upon,  from  Plato,  through  More,  Bacon,  and  Campa- 
nula, down  to  Bellamv  and  Morris,  he  has  constructed 

212 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

the  shakiest  effigy  ever  made  of  old  clothes  stuffed  with 
straw/'  said  the  professor. 

The  manufacturer  was  silent.  The  hanker  said :  "  I 
don't  know.  He  grappled  pretty  holdly  with  your  in- 
sinuations. That  frank  declaration  that  Altruria  was 
all  these  pretty  soap-bubble  worlds  solidified  was  rather 
fine." 

"  It  was  splendid !"  cried  Mrs.  Makely.  The  lawyer 
and  the  minister  came  toward  us  from  where  they  had 
been  sitting  together.  She  called  out  to  them :  "  Why 
in  the  world  didn't  one  of  your  gentlemen  get  up  and 
propose  a  vote  of  thanks  ?" 

"  The  difficulty  with  me  is,"  continued  the  banker, 
"  that  he  has  rendered  Altruria  incredible.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  he  is  an  Altrurian,  but  I  doubt  very  much 
if  he  comes  from  anywhere  in  particular,  and  I  find 
this  quite  a  blow,  for  we  had  got  Altruria  nicely  located 
on  the  map,  and  were  beginning  to  get  accounts  of  it 
in  the  newspapers." 

"  Yes,  that  is  just  exactly  the  way  I  feel  about 
it,"  sighed  Mrs.  Makely.  "  But  still,  don't  you  think 
there  ought  to  have  been  a  vote  of  thanks,  Mr. 
Bullion  ?" 

"  Why,  certainly.  The  fellow  was  immensely  amus- 
ing, and  you  must  have  got  a  lot  of  money  by  him. 
It  was  an  oversight  not  to  make  him  a  formal  acknowl- 
edgment of  some  kind.  If  we  offered  him  money,  he 
would  have  to  leave  it  all  behind  him  here  when  he 
went  home  to  Altruria." 

"  Just  as  we  do  when  we  go  to  heaven,"  I  suggested ; 
the  banker  did  not  answer,  and  I  instantly  felt  that  in 
the  presence  of  the  minister  my  remark  was  out  of 
taste. 

"Well,  then,  don't  you  think,"  said  Mrs.  Makely, 

who  had  a  leathery  insensibility  to  everything  but  the 

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A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

purpose  possessing  her,  "  that  we  ought  at  least  to  go 
and  say  something  to  him  personally  3" 

"  Yes,  I  think  we  ought,"  said  the  banker,  and  we 
all  walked  up  to  where  the  Altrurian  stood,  still  thickly 
surrounded  by  the  lower  classes,  who  were  shaking 
hands  with  him  and  getting  in  a  word  with  him  now 
and  then. 

One  of  the  construction  gang  said,  carelessly :  "  No 
all-rail  route  to  Altruria,  I  suppose  ?" 

"  No,"  answered  Homos,  "  it's  a  far  sea  voyage." 

"  Well,  I  shouldn't  mind  working  my  passage,  if  you 
think  they'd  let  me  stay  after  I  got  there." 

"  Ah,  you  mustn't  go  to  Altruria.  You  must  let 
Altruria  come  to  you,"  returned  Homos,  with  that  con- 
founded smile  of  his  that  always  won  my  heart. 

"  Yes,"  shouted  Reuben  Camp,  whose  thin  face  was 
red  with  excitement,  "  that's  the  word.  Have  Altruria 
right  here,  and  right  now." 

The  old  farmer,  who  had  several  times  spoken,  cackled 
out :  "  I  didn't  know,  one  while,  when  you  was  talk'n' 
about  not  havin'  no  money,  but  what  some  on  us  had 
had  Altrury  here  for  quite  a  spell,  already.  I  don't 
pass  more'n  fifty  dolla's  through  my  hands  most  years." 

A  laugh  went  up,  and  then,  at  sight  of  Mrs.  Makely 
heading  our  little  party,  the  people  round  Homos  civilly 
made  way  for  us.  She  rushed  upon  him,  and  seized 
his  hand  in  both  of  hers ;  she  dropped  her  fan,  parasol, 
gloves,  handkerchief,  and  vinaigrette  in  the  grass  to  do 
so.  "  Oh,  Mr.  Homos,"  she  fluted,  and  the  tears  came 
into  her  eyes,  "  it  was  beautiful,  beautiful,  every  word 
of  it !  I  sat  in  a  perfect  trance  from  beginning  to  end, 
and  I  felt  that  it  was  all  as  true  as  it  was  beautiful. 
People  all  around  me  were  breathless  with  interest,  and 
I  don't  know  how  I  can  ever  thank  you  enough." 

"  Yes,  indeed,"  the  professor  hastened  to  say,  before 

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A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

the  Altrurian  could  answer,  and  he  beamed  malignant- 
ly upon  him  through  his  spectacles  while  he  spoke,  "  it 
was  like  some  strange  romance." 

"  I  don't  know  that  I  should  go  so  far  as  that,"  said 
the  banker,  in  his  turn,  "  but  it  certainly  seemed  too 
good  to  be  true." 

"  Yes,"  the  Altrurian  responded,  simply,  but  a  little 
sadly ;  "  now  that  I  am  away  from  it  all,  and  in  con- 
ditions so  different,  I  sometimes  had  to  ask  myself,  as 
I  went  on,  if  my  whole  life  had  not  hitherto  been  a 
dream,  and  Altruria  were  not  some  blessed  vision  of  the 
night." 

"  Then  you  know  how  to  account  for  a  feeling  which 
I  must  acknowledge,  too  ?"  the  lawyer  asked,  courteous- 
ly.    "  But  it  was  most  interesting." 

"  The  kingdom  of  God  upon  earth,"  said  the  min- 
ister— "  it  ought  not  to  be  incredible ;  but  that,  more 
than  anything  else  you  told  us  of,  gave  me  pause." 

"  You  of  all  men  ?"  returned  the  Altrurian,  gently. 

"  Yes,"  said  the  minister,  with  a  certain  dejection, 
"  when  I  remember  what  I  have  seen  of  men,  when  I 
reflect  what  human  nature  is,  how  can  I  believe  that 
the  kingdom  of  God  will  ever  come  upon  the  earth  ?" 

"  But  in  heaven,  where  He  reigns,  who  is  it  does  His 
will  ?    The  spirits  of  men  ?"  pursued  the  Altrurian. 

"  Yes,  but  conditioned  as  men  are  here — " 

"  But  if  they  were  conditioned  as  men  are  there  ?" 

"  Now,  I  can't  let  you  two  good  people  get  into  a 
theological  dispute,"  Mrs.  Makely  pushed  in.  "  Here 
is  Mr.  Twelvemough  dying  to  shake  hands  with  Mr. 
Homos  and  compliment  his  distinguished  guest." 

"  Ah,  Mr.  Homos  knows  what  I  must  have  thought 

of  his  talk  without  my  telling  him,"  I  began,  skilfully. 

"  But  I  am  sorry  that  I  am  to  lose  my  distinguished 

guest  so  soon." 

215 


A  TRAVELER  FROM  ALTRURIA 

Reuben  Camp  broke  out :  "  That  was  my  blunder, 
Mr.  Twelvemough.  Mr.  Homos  and  I  had  talked  it 
over  conditionally,  and  I  was  not  to  speak  of  it  till  he 
had  told  you ;  but  it  slipped  out  in  the  excitement  of  the 
moment." 

"  Oh,  it's  all  right,"  I  said,  and  I  shook  hands 
cordially  with  both  of  them.  "  It  will  be  the  greatest 
possible  advantage  for  Mr.  Homos  to  see  certain  phases 
of  American  life  at  close  range,  and  he  couldn't  possibly 
see  them  under  better  auspices  than  yours,  Camp." 

"  Yes,  I'm  going  to  drive  him  through  the  hill  coun- 
try after  haying,  and  then  I'm  going  to  take  him  down 
and  show  him  one  of  our  big  factory  towns." 

I  believe  this  was  done,  but  finally  the  Altrurian 
went  on  to  New  York,  where  he  was  to  pass  the  winter. 
We  parted  friends;  I  even  offered  him  some  intro- 
ductions; but  his  acquaintance  had  become  more  and 
more  difficult,  and  I  was  not  sorry  to  part  with  him. 
That  taste  of  his  for  low  company  was  incurable,  and  I 
was  glad  that  I  was  not  to  be  responsible  any  longer 
for  whatever  strange  thing  he  might  do  next.  I  think 
he  remained  very  popular  with  the  classes  he  most  af- 
fected; a  throng  of  natives,  construction  hands,  and 
table-girls  saw  him  off  on  his  train;  and  he  left  large 
numbers  of  such  admirers  in  our  house  and  neighbor- 
hood, devout  in  the  faith  that  there  was  such  a  com- 
monwealth as  Altruria,  and  that  he  was  really  an  Altru- 
rian. As  for  the  more  cultivated  people  who  had  met 
him,  they  continued  of  two  minds  upon  both  points. 


THE    END 


